Norway bombing/shooting

POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Tuesday, May 7, 2019 22:01
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NIKI2

Friday, July 22, 2011 9:16 PM

Gawd, how awful! Why Norway, we wondered?? What I heard is that Norwegian newspapers continue to publish cartoons that anger Muslims, but that just didn't seem enough reason to go after a bunch of kids on an island. Reading this explained the car bomb, but still not the islane shooting... My heart goes out to them all.

Quote:

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A bomb ripped open buildings in the heart of Norway's government Friday, and a man dressed as a police officer opened fire at an island youth camp connected to the ruling party. At least seven people were killed in the blast and nine more in the camp shootings, the peaceful nation's worst violence since World War II.

Oslo police said 9 or 10 people were killed at the camp on Utoya island, where the youth wing of the Labor Party was holding a summer camp for hundreds of youths. Acting Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim says a man was arrested in the shooting, and the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there.

Sponheim said police were still trying to get an overview of the camp shooting and could not say whether there was more than one shooter.

Aerial images broadcast by Norway's TV2 showed members of a SWAT team dressed in black arriving at the island in boats and running up the dock. Behind them, people stripped down to their underwear swam away from the island toward shore, some using flotation devices.

In Oslo, the capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, the bombing left a square covered in twisted metal, shattered glass and documents expelled from surrounding buildings.

Most of the windows in the 20-floor high-rise where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his administration work were shattered. Other buildings damaged house government offices and the headquarters of some of Norway's leading newspapers.

Stoltenberg was working at home Friday and was unharmed, according to senior adviser Oivind Ostang.

Oslo University Hospital said 12 people were admitted for treatment following the Utoya shooting, and 11 people were taken there from the explosion in Oslo. The hospital asked people to donate blood.

The attacks formed the deadliest day of terror in Western Europe since the 2005 London bombings, which killed 52 people.

Sponheim wouldn't give any details about the shooting suspect, who he said was dressed in a police uniform when he opened fire into a crowd of youths.

A spokesman for Stoltenberg's Labor Party, Per Gunnar Dahl, said he couldn't confirm that there were fatalities at Utoya, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Oslo. The party's youth wing organizes an annual summer camp on the island, and Stoltenberg had been scheduled to speak there Saturday.

"There are at least five people who have been seriously wounded and have been transported to a local hospital," Dahl said. He said the shooting "created a panic situation where people started to swim from the island" to escape.

Police blocked off roads leading to the lake around Utoya. An AP reporter was turned away by police about 5-6 kilometers from the lake, as eight ambulances with sirens blaring entered the area.

In Oslo, police said the explosion was caused by "one or more" bombs, but declined to speculate on who was behind the attack. They later sealed off the nearby offices of broadcaster TV 2 after discovering a suspicious package.

Ian Dutton, who was in a nearby hotel, said the building "shook as if it had been struck by lightning or an earthquake." He looked outside and saw "a wall of debris and smoke."

Dutton, who is from New York, said the scene reminded him of Sept. 11 — people "just covered in rubble" walking through "a fog of debris."

"It wasn't any sort of a panic," he said, "It was really just people in disbelief and shock, especially in a such as safe and open country as Norway, you don't even think something like that is possible."

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