Osla: Police said they were questioning a right-wing Christian Saturday over the massacre of 94 people in a killing spree that Norway’s prime minister said had turned an island paradise into hell on earth.
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As harrowing testimony emerged from the summer camp where scores of youngsters were mowed down, Norway was struggling to understand how a country famed as a beacon of peace could experience such bloodshed on its soil.
“Never since the Second World War has our country been hit by a crime on this scale,” Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told journalists as police searched for more bodies on the idyllic Utoeya island.
The latest death toll from the island massacre stood at 87 while seven people died in the Oslo bombing.
While there was no official confirmation of the suspect’s identity, he was widely named by the local media as Anders Behring Breivik.
Nordisk member
The head of the populist right-wing Progress Party (FrP) confirmed that Breivik had been a party member between 1999 and 2006 and for several years a leader in its youth movement.
“Those who knew the suspect when he was a member of the party say that he seemed like a modest person that seldom engaged himself in the political discussions,” Siv Jensen said in a statement on the party’s website.
Anti-fascist monitors meanwhile said Breivik was also a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi internet forum named Nordisk, which hosts discussions ranging from white power music to political strategies to crush democracy.
The massive explosion which ripped through government buildings, including Stoltenberg’s office and the finance ministry, in downtown Oslo, was caused by a car bomb police said Saturday.
Fired for 1.5 hours
It is thought that the bomber then caught a ferry to nearby Utoeya wearing a police sweater. On arrival, he claimed to be investigating the bomb attack and opened fire with an automatic weapon.
The suspect kept shooting for 1.5 hours before surrendering to a SWAT team, which arrived 40 minutes after they were called, police said last night.
A spokesman for Europol told AP that the European police agency is setting up a task force of more than 50 experts to help northern European countries investigate terrorism in the wake of the deadly attacks in Norway.
Meanwhile, President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan sent a cable of condolences to Norway’s King Harald V on the victims of the attacks.
His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, sent a similar cable to the Norwegian monarch, WAM reported.
