Condolences To The Norwegian People….

“Flowers are placed at a flagpole with the Norwegian flag flying at half-staff in front of the Scandinavian embassies’ building in Berlin, Germany, Saturday July 23. 2011” (AP)

As if there wasn’t enough madness in the world,  now this.

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Norway gunman fired for 1.5 hours on island

OSLO, Norway (AP) — Police arrived at an island massacre about 1.5 hours 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 82 people died before that.

Survivors of the shooting spree have described hiding and fleeing into the water to escape the gunman, but a police briefing Saturday 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 U.S. 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.

A SWAT team was dispatched to the island more than 50 minutes after people vacationing at a campground said they heard shooting across the lake, according to Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim. The drive to the lake took about 20 minutes, and once there, the team took another 20 minutes to find a boat.

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.

“There were problems with transport to Utoya,” where the youth-wing of Norway’s left-leaning Labor Party was holding a retreat, Sponheim said. “It was difficult to get a hold of boats.”

At least 85 people were killed on the island, but police said four or five people were still missing.

Divers have been searching the surrounding waters, and Sponheim said the missing may have drowned. Police earlier said there was still an unexploded device on the island, but it later turned out to be fake.

The attack followed the explosion of a bomb packed into a panel truck outside the building that houses the prime minister’s office in Oslo, according to a police official

“It was some kind of Oklahoma City-type bomb,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because police hadn’t released the information.

Seven people were killed, and police said there are still body parts in the building. The Oslo University hospital said it has so far received 11 wounded from the bombing and 19 people from the camp shooting.

Police have charged Breivik under Norway’s terror law. He will be arraigned on Monday when a court decides whether police can continue to hold him as the investigation continues.

Authorities have not given a motive for the attacks, but both were in areas connected to the Labor Party, which leads a coalition government.

Even police confessed to not knowing much about the suspect, but details trickled out about him all day: He had ties to a right-leaning political party, he posted on Christian fundamentalist websites, and he rented a farm where he amassed six tons of fertilizer.

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

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

Earlier in the day, a farm supply store said they had alerted police that he bought six tons of fertilizer, which is highly explosive and can be used in homemade bombs.

Police and soldiers were searching for evidence and potential bombs at the farm south of Oslo on Saturday. Havard Nordhagen Olsen, a neighbor, told The Associated Press that Breivik moved in about one moth ago, just next to his house and said he seemed like “a regular guy.”

Olsen said recognized his neighbor in the newspapers this morning and admitted to “being under shock.”

Meanwhile, Mazyar Keshvari, a spokesman for Norway’s Progress Party — which is conservative but within the political mainstream — said that the suspect was a paying member of the party’s youth wing from 1999 to 2004.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg called the tragedy peacetime Norway’s deadliest day.

Read the rest of this sad, sad story: http://news.yahoo.com/norway-gunman-fired-1-5-hours-island-170527353.html

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Photo: Courtesy AP Photo/dapd/ Paul Zinken

Posted in: Other News

Tags: Norway, tragedy, Oslo bombing, Utoeya Island massacre