Oslo Blast

The world does not seem to be safe any more as terrorists appear to be striking targets at will. Who would have thought Norway would be a target? Norway is considered to be one of the most peaceful countries. Such incidents show that combating terrorism is a challenge that all world leaders face. The fact is that global measures and strategies adopted in the fight against terror are grossly inadequate. What is needed is a strong will and unprecedented international collaboration to fight back.

Norway suffered the worst attack in its post-war history overnight as terrorists bombed Oslo’s central government district and opened fire at a political youth camp on an island near the capital. At least 80 people were dead as a result of a rampage on a Norwegian island. The Oslo blast damaged buildings and blew out windows over more than a kilometre radius, filling the area with smoke and littering it with debris. That attack and the massive explosion in the heart of Oslo were definitely linked, the police said. Seven were killed in the attack in the Norwegian capital, officials said. In all, 90 people were hospitalized as a result of the Oslo blast. It was the biggest attack in Western Europe since the 2005 London transport bombings.

The detonation took place near the 17-storey government building where the prime minister has his offices and the headquarters of Norway’s biggest tabloid paper, VG. Residents were told to stay away from the town centre, or stay in their homes and hotel rooms.

In what Norwegian police said was a coordinated attack, about 700 youth members of the Labour party, some as young as 15, who were holding their annual summer camp on an island of Utoya, a lake west of Oslo.  The killer arrived on the boat that ferries visitors across the 5 Km of water from the mainland and told campers that he was carrying out a security check. After just a few minutes, he took a handgun and started to shoot people. A panic broke out; people tried to hide; some jumped into the water and tried to swim ashore. Others took shelter in caves or bushes, or climbed trees. He went after them, a lot of people are wounded and also a lot of people

Police arrived at an island massacre about an hour and a half after a gunman first opened fire, slowed because they didn’t have quick access to a helicopter and then couldn’t find a boat to make their way to the scene just several hundred yards (meters) offshore. The assailant surrendered when police finally reached him, but 85 people died before that.

Footage filmed from a helicopter that showed the gunman firing into the water added to the impression that police were slow to the scene. They chose to drive, Sponheim said, because their helicopter wasn’t on standby.

Survivors of the shooting spree have described hiding and fleeing into the water to escape the gunman, but a police briefing after one week, detailed for the first time how long the terror lasted ‘and how long victims waited for help.

The shooting came on the heels of what police told The Associated Press was an “Oklahoma city-type” bombing in Oslo’s downtown: It targeted a government building, was allegedly perpetrated by a homegrown assailant and used the same mix of fertilizer and fuel that blew up a federal building in the US in 1995.

In all, at least 92 people were killed in the twin attacks that police are blaming on the same suspect, 32-year-old Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik.

“He has confessed to the factual circumstances,” Breivik’s defense lawyer, Geir Lippestad, told public broadcaster NRK. Lippestad said his client had also made some comments about his motives.

“He’s said some things about that but I don’t want to talk about it now,” the lawyer told NRK.

Norwegian news agency NTB said the suspect wrote a 1,500-page manifesto before the attack in which he attacked multiculturalism and Muslim immigration. The manifesto also described how to acquire explosives and contained pictures of Breivik, NTB said. Oslo police declined to comment on the report.

Initially, there was speculation that attacks could be linked to Norway’s military involvement in Nato operations in Afghanistan, where it has 500 soldiers, or Libya, where Norwegian jet fighters are flying sorties; soon the notion was dismissed as the perpetrator of attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, a 32-year-old Norwegian, admitted detonating a bomb at Norway’s main government building and gunning down people at a Labour Party youth camp on a nearby island in what he saw as a blow against multi-culturalism. Breivik targeted the Labour Party as a symbol of Europe’s acceptance of Muslim immigrants.

In Oslo, the building of a publisher which recently put out a translation of a Danish book on the cartoon issuewas also affected, but was apparently not the target. The Oslo attacks, though hitting two targets, were not simultaneous and the delay between them left open the possibility of a single perpetrator.

The Oslo district attacked is the very heart of power in Norway. Nevertheless, security is not tight in a country unused to such violence and better known for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize and mediating in conflicts, including the Middle East and Sri Lanka.

Since the July 22 bombing and shootings, critics have called into question the competence of the emergency response. Critics have told local media that Oslo’s specially armed crisis-response team lacked quick access to a transport helicopter. Some observers have also questioned why officers in nearby Hoenefoss chose to wait for the Oslo-based team — some 45 km away by car — rather than setting off immediately by boat for the island.