Up to 100 people have been killed in twin terror attacks in Norway, at least seven in car bomb in Oslo and 80 people in a gun attack on Utoeya Island.
Up to 100 people have been killed in twin terror attacks in Norway. A car bomb in central Oslo has killed at least seven people, and in a gun attack on Utoeya Island at least 80 people have been massacred at a Labour Party youth camp – many of them gunned down or drowned in freezing waters as they attempted to swim to safety.
Eyewitnesses describe a scene of “chaos” in Oslo, with screams ringing the air and corpses lining the streets.
Jon Magnus, chief foreign correspondent of Oslo’s VG newspaper, said:
“When I reached the blown-out windows closest to the explosion I could see the prime minister’s office on fire. I could see we were right in the middle of the explosion. When I ran out of the building it was complete chaos.
“I could hear people screaming and see people covered in blood and what looked like corpses, lifeless people with their faces covered. I counted four or five. Before we left our own offices we had a pair of binoculars and we could see in the health department what seemed to be bodies hanging out of the windows.
“We could see into some of the floors and could see people also inside, what appeared to be bodies…”
While in Utoeya, the BBC reports:
Ali Esbati, a Swedish politician of Iranian descent who was at the camp, told the BBC he saw the suspected gunman hours after the shootings began, having been hiding in the woods. Mr Esbati said that he appeared to be in a police uniform and was holding a rifle: “I jumped into the water like several other people and moved a few metres away and tried to see if he was coming.”
A number of witnesses described how terrified campers jumped into the water to escape the indiscriminate gunfire. But the gunman reportedly fired at people swimming away.
“I saw many dead people,” youth camp delegate Elise told the Associated Press news agency. “He first shot people on the island. Afterwards he started shooting people in the water.” She said she hid behind the rock the gunman was standing on. “I could hear his breathing from the top of the rock,” she said.
It is unclear who is behind the horrendous attacks. A 32-year-old man, named as Anders Behring Breivik, has been arrested.
8 Responses to “Norway’s day of terror”
SlashedUK
RT @leftfootfwd: Norway's day of terror: http://bit.ly/qkZk3i #NewsClub
Trakgalvis
RT @leftfootfwd: Norway's day of terror: http://bit.ly/qkZk3i #NewsClub
Joanny Stewart
RT @leftfootfwd: Norway's day of terror: http://bit.ly/qkZk3i #NewsClub
Robert
Right wing extermist or that is what it looks like, I see the Muslim groups jumped on the band wagon to say it was them, but it does look more and more like an idiot with a gun who hated Muslims and it seems his own people.
George McLean
@ 1. Robert
The police in the US and Norway have said the alleged “claims by jihadist groups” are hoaxes: they were not made by any such groups but by anti-Muslim organisations or individuals; that is to say, by organisations or individuals who probably hold similar views to the individual who has been arrested, and whose Facebook entry apparently refers to him as a conservative Christian fundamentalist (although news is emerging all the time).