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Evidence emerged that the terrorist attack that killed 23 people in Tunis Wednesday most of them tourists was in part enabled by the chaos in neighboring Libya, even as rallies were held across Tunisia denouncing violence.

Security Minister Rafik Chelly told Al Hiwar Ettounsi TV that two of the attackers on the Bardo Museum who were killed by security forces had attended militant training camp in Libya last December. He said Tunisians have been hosted at training camps in Derna long the center of Islamist militancy in Libya and in the eastern city of Benghazi, the country's second largest.

The self-styled Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the attack, though whether the group or a member of its lose network of affiliates in North Africa was actually responsible is hard to say. Groups that rely on terror like IS one of its foundational texts is called the "Management of Savagery" often falsely claim attacks to make themselves look larger and more important than they are.

Nevertheless, IS supporters have been highly active in Libya, both participating in and benefiting from the civil war. When the group's local affiliate murdered 23 captives in February most of them Egyptian Christians it was a message that IS had established more than a toe-hold in North Africa.

The murders took place on a beach, in what IS called "Wilyat Trabulus," or the "Province of Tripoli" in their version of the globe. Baghdadi's followers have taken to declaring national and local borders null and void and renaming places they imagine they rule. The name roughly corresponds to the coastal eastern half of the country.

But what is clear is that IS supporters have the numbers, the wherewithal, and the operational security to hold 21 captives for weeks and then carry out a highly-produced murder show on a beach without fear of intervention from Egypt or anyone else. The thin stretch along the Mediterranean coast is home to roughly 90 percent of Libya's people.

And though Tunisia generally has less Al Qaeda-style terrorism than its neighbors Wednesday's attack was the bloodiest in the country since 19 people were killed at a synagogue there in 2002 it has long been an exporter of jihadis. Tunisians were a major source of recruits for Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during the US occupation of that country and have continued to travel abroad to join that group's successor, the Islamic State.

To be sure, the numbers are a drop in the bucket compared to Tunisia's population of 10 million. It is estimated that about 3,000 to 6,000 Tunisians have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria. But the prospect of some of those fighters one day coming home is a major security concern for Tunisia, much as it is for the region. Returning fighters from the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan were a major contributor to the rise of Islamist militancy in Libya, for instance.

The Washington Post interviewed a friend of Saber Khachnaoui, one of the dead attackers, who said the Tunisian government had had an eye on the young man for some time.

A friend of Khachnaouis family said in an interview that police detained three of the young mans relatives in a town in central Tunisia. The friend, Nidal Abdelli, said that Khachnaoui, 19, disappeared about three months ago and that the Tunisian Interior Ministry later informed the family that he had traveled to Derna, in eastern Libya, apparently to receive training.

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In museum attack, Tunisia sees Libya's instability cross the border