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OSLO, Norway (AP) — 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 a witness said
more than 20 died in the camp shootings, the peaceful nation’s
worst violence since World War II.
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Andre Scheie told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he saw “very many
dead by the shore” of the camp on Utoya island, where the youth
wing of the Labor Party was holding a summer camp for hundreds of
youths. He said some victims were shot in the water after trying
desperately to swim away. “There are about 20 to 25 dead,” he
said.
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Police did not immediately confirm the account, but Acting Police
Chief Sveinung Sponheim said a suspect in the shooting has been
arrested. He said police were still trying to get an overview of
the camp shooting and could not say whether there was more than one
shooter.
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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.
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Sponheim said the arrested man also was linked to the bombing in
Oslo, the capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is
awarded.
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A square was covered in twisted metal, shattered glass and
documents expelled from surrounding buildings, which house
government offices and the headquarters of some of Norway’s leading
newspapers. Most of the windows in the 20-floor high-rise where
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his administration work were
shattered.
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Stoltenberg was working at home Friday and was unharmed, according
to senior adviser Oivind Ostang.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.”
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“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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Public broadcaster NRK showed video of a blackened car lying on its
side amid the debris. An AP reporter who was in the office of
Norwegian news agency NTB said the building shook from the blast
and all employees were evacuated. Down in the street, he saw one
person with a bleeding leg being led away from the area.
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The explosion occurred at 3:30 p.m. (1330 GMT), as Ole Tommy
Pedersen stood at a bus stop 100 meters (yards) away.
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“I saw three or four injured people being carried out of the
building a few minutes later,” Pedersen told AP.
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The United States, European Union, NATO and the U.K., 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.”
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In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Heide Bronke Fulton
called the violence “despicable.” There has been no confirmation of
any U.S. casualties, she said. The U.S. Embassy in Norway warned
Americans to avoid downtown Oslo.
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The U.S. has offered help to Norwegian authorities but there has
been no specific request for assistance, she said.
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The attacks come as Norway grapples with a homegrown terror plot
linked to al-Qaida. Two suspects are in jail awaiting
charges.
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Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an
Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death
if he is deported from the Scandinavian country. The indictment
centered on statements that Mullah Krekar – the founder of the
Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam – made to various news media,
including American network NBC.
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Terrorism has also been a concern in neighboring Denmark since an
uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad six years ago. Danish
authorities say they have foiled several terror plots linked to the
2005 newspaper cartoons that triggered protests in Muslim
countries. Last month, a Danish appeals court on Wednesday
sentenced a Somali man to 10 years in prison for breaking into the
home of the cartoonist.
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—
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Associated Press reporters Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Matthew
Lee and Rita Foley in Washington and Bjoern H. Amland in Hoenefoss,
Norway, contributed to this report.
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