Oslo: Norwegians yesterday began a solemn day of memorials for victims of last week's bomb and shooting massacre, and the first funerals for the 76 victims were being held.
"Today it is one week since Norway was hit by evil," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said at a memorial service in the "People's House" assembly hall.
"We have to live with July 22, but together we will make it," he said from a stage adorned with red roses, the symbol of his governing Labour Party.
In his speech, Labour Party youth-wing leader Eskil Pedersen said the gunman attacked Norway's core values, such as democracy, tolerance and fighting racism.
"Long before he stands before a court we can say: he has lost," Pedersen said. He vowed that the youth organisation would return to Utoeya island — where the shootings occurred — next year for its annual summer gathering, a tradition that stretches back decades.
Another memorial service was being held at a mosque in an immigrant district of Oslo. The confessed attacker, a vehement anti-Muslim, was to undergo his second round of questioning by police yesterday.
Unity call
Stoltenberg has urged his increasingly diverse Nordic nation to show unity at the services in the face of its deadliest assault during peacetime in a bombing in Oslo and a shooting rampage at a youth camp on Utoya.
Norwegian news agency NTB said suspect Anders Behring Breivik was picked up at a jail yesterday and transported to police headquarters in Oslo for a session of questioning.
Investigators believe the 32-year-old Norwegian acted alone, after years of meticulous planning, and haven't found anything to support his claims that he's part of an anti-Muslim militant network plotting a series of coups d'etat across Europe. Breivik was questioned for seven hours on Saturday, the day after the twin attacks targeting the government district of Oslo and a youth camp of the prime minister's left-leaning Labour Party on the island northwest of the capital.
