Norway shaken by fatal bombing, shootings

OSLO -- Norway's peace was shattered twice Friday when a bomb ripped open buildings in the heart of its government and a man dressed as a police officer gunned down youth at a summer camp.

Police say at least 80 people were killed in a shooting spree at the youth camp of Norway's Labor Party.

Police director Oystein Maeland told reporters early Saturday they had discovered many more victims after initially reporting the death toll at 10.

Maeland couldn't say how many people were injured in the shooting.

Hundreds of youth were attending the summer camp organized by the youth wing of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg's Labor Party on the island of Utoya.

Police also say seven people were killed in an explosion in Oslo.

Police linked a Norwegian to both attacks, which is the nation's worst violence since World War II.

Police said they did not know the motive or whether the attacks were the work of one person or a terrorist group, but Justice Minister Knut Storberget said the man who opened fire at the youth camp is Norwegian.

In Oslo, the capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, the bombing left a square covered in twisted metal, shattered glass, documents expelled from surrounding buildings and a dust-fogged scene that reminded one visitor from New York of Sept. 11.

Ian Dutton, who was in a nearby hotel, said people "just covered in rubble" were walking through "a fog of debris." "It wasn't any sort of a panic," he said, "It was really just people in disbelief and shock."

Later at Utoya, an island northwest of Oslo, hundreds of youth at a camp where the prime minister had been scheduled to speak Saturday ran in terror and even tried swimming to safety as the attacker fired. Emilie Bersaas, identified as a camper by Sky News television, said she ran inside a school building and hid under a bed.

"At one point the shooting was very, very close . . . I think it actually hit the building one time, and the people in the next room screamed very loud," she said.

"I laid under the bed for two hours and then the police smashed a window and came in," Bersaas said. "It seems kind of unreal, especially in Norway. This is not something that could happen here."

The camp was organized by the youth wing of the ruling Labor Party. Acting national Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim said a man was arrested in the shooting, and the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there.

Police did not immediately say how much time elapsed between the bombing and the camp attack.

Sponheim said the camp shooter "wore a sweater with a police sign on it. I can confirm that he wasn't a police employee and never has been."

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.