Norway gunman fired for 90 minutes

When the SWAT team arrived, the gunman, who had two firearms, surrendered, said Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim.

“There were problems with transport to Utoya”, where the youth-wing of Norway’s Labour Party was holding a retreat, Mr Sponheim said. “It was difficult to get a hold of boats, but that problem was solved when the SWAT team arrived.”

At least 85 people were killed on the island, but police said four or five people are still missing. Divers have been searching the waters around the island.

The attack followed a bombing at a government building in the capital, Oslo, where seven people were killed. Police are still digging through rubble there, and Mr Sponheim said body parts remained in the building.

Police have not identified the suspect, but Norwegian national broadcaster NRK said he is 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik.

Authorities have not identified a motive but said he visited Christian fundamentalist websites and once belonged to the youth-wing of a rightist party.

Police said he is talking to them and has admitted firing weapons on the island. It was not clear if he had confessed to anything else he is accused of. Police said he had retained a lawyer, who did not want to be named.

“He has had a dialogue with the police the whole time, but he’s a very demanding suspect,” Mr Sponheim said.

Norway’s royal family and prime minister led the nation in mourning, visiting grieving relatives of the scores of teenagers who were gunned down.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said the twin attacks made yesterday peacetime Norway’s deadliest day.

“This is beyond comprehension. It’s a nightmare. It’s a nightmare for those who have been killed, for their mothers and fathers, family and friends,” he told reporters.

Earlier today, a farm supply store said they had alerted police that the suspect bought six tons of fertiliser, which is highly explosive and can be used in home-made bombs.

Oslo University Hospital said it has so far received 11 casualties from the bombing and 19 from the camp shooting.

Gun violence is rare in Norway, where the average policeman patrolling in the streets does not carry a firearm.

Reports that the attacker was motivated by political ideology were shocking to many Norwegians, who pride themselves on the openness of their society. Indeed, Norway is almost synonymous with the kind of free expression being exercised by the youth at the political retreat.

Mr Stoltenberg vowed that the attack would not change those fundamental values.

“It’s a society where young people can... have controversial opinions without being afraid,” he told reporters.

Norway’s royal family and prime minister led the nation in mourning, visiting grieving relatives of the scores of youth gunned down.

Buildings around the capital lowered their flags to half-mast. People streamed to Oslo Cathedral to light candles and lay flowers; outside, mourners began building a makeshift altar from dug-up cobblestones. The army patrolled the streets of the capital, a highly unusual sight for the normally placid country.

The city centre was a sea of roadblocks today, with groups of people peering over the barricades wherever they sprang up, as the shell-shocked Nordic nation was gripped by reports that the gunman may not have acted alone. Police have not confirmed a second assailant but said they are investigating witness reports.

The queen and the prime minister hugged when they arrived at the hotel where families were waiting to identify the bodies. Both the king and queen shook hands with mourners, while the prime minister, his voice trembling, told reporters of the harrowing stories survivors had recounted to him.

On the island of Utoya, panicked teenagers attending a Labour Party youth wing summer camp plunged into the water or played dead to avoid the assailant in the assault. A picture sent out on Twitter showed a blurry figure in dark clothing pointing a gun into the water, with bodies all around him.

The carnage began yesterday afternoon in Oslo, when a bomb rocked the heart of Norway. About two hours later, the shootings began at the youth retreat, according to a police official.

The blast in Oslo, Norway’s capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, left a square covered in twisted metal, shattered glass and documents expelled from surrounding buildings.

The dust-clogged scene after the blast reminded one visitor from New York of September 11. People were “just covered in rubble”, walking through “a fog of debris”, said Ian Dutton, who was in a nearby hotel.

Asked whether all victims at Utoya died from gunshot wounds or if some had drowned, foreign minister Mr Stoere said: “You will likely see a combination.”

A 15-year-old camper named Elise who was on Utoya said she heard gunshots, but then saw a police officer and thought she was safe. Then he started shooting people in front of her eyes.

“I saw many dead people,” said Elise, whose father, Vidar Myhre, did not want her to disclose her last name. “He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water.”

Elise said she hid behind the same rock that the killer was standing on. “I could hear his breathing from the top of the rock,” she said.

She said it was impossible to say how many minutes passed while she was waiting for him to stop.

At a hotel in the village of Sundvollen, where survivors of the shooting were taken, 21-year-old Dana Berzingi wore trousers stained with blood. He said the fake police officer ordered people to come closer, then pulled weapons and ammunition from a bag and started shooting.

Several victims “had pretended they were dead to survive”, he said. But after shooting the victims with one gun, the gunman shot them again in the head with a shotgun, he said.

“I lost several friends,” said Mr Berzingi, who used the mobile phone of one of those friends to call police.

An official said the attack “is probably more Norway’s Oklahoma City than it is Norway’s World Trade Centre”. Domestic terrorists carried out the 1995 attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City, while foreign terrorists were responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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. People who had stripped down to their underwear moved in the opposite direction, swimming away from the island toward the mainland, some using flotation devices.

The United States, European Union, Nato and the UK all quickly condemned the bombing, which Britain’s Foreign Secretary William Hague called “horrific” and Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen deemed a “heinous act”.

“It’s a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring,” President Barack Obama said.

Mr Obama extended his condolences to Norway’s people and offered US assistance with the investigation. He said he remembered how warmly Norwegians treated him in Oslo when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II wrote to Norway’s King Harald to offer her condolences and express her shock and sadness at the shooting attacks in his country.

A US counter-terrorism official said America knew of no links to terrorist groups and early indications were the attack was domestic.