... and another nearby at a youth camp. At least 7 people have died and lots are seriously injured. :( They don't yet know who did it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14254705
http://www.cnn.com/
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... and another nearby at a youth camp. At least 7 people have died and lots are seriously injured. :( They don't yet know who did it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14254705
http://www.cnn.com/
Oh my gosh. The bomb did lots of damage as well as killing some poor folks. How sad. I will be following it closely as the news unravels. How horrible. I just don't understand humanity some times. What is wrong with man? Always at war, always killing one another. I just don't get it.
So sad, and I wonder why it happened, I hope we learn more. Those poor people!
I've been reading updates on BBC News Online all day. Apparently the suspect went to the island camp dressed as a policeman, gathered young people around to talk to them about the bomb blast and then started shooting them. The coldness of his actions beggars belief.
Terrible. Awful.
Shocking and sad. My hopes and prayers that these people can make it through with as little pain as possible.
This just makes me sick. I heard on news radio that a single individual has been connected to this. I wonder if it is a situation like that guy who shot Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona, who got hold of a gun despite serious behavioral problems. Just very sad and tragic. 80 people-- that's the size of my church choir. I cannot imagine that. Most of what I know about Norway I learned from Epcot- stave churches, smorgasbord, the sea, boats, mountains, fishing, and outdoor activities year round. Prayers tonight for the people of Norway.
From the online Chicago Tribune---
10:51 p.m. CDT, July 22, 2011
OSLO, Norway (AP) — A Norwegian who dressed as a police officer to gun down summer campers killed at least 80 people at an island retreat, horrified police said early Saturday. It took investigators several hours to begin the realize the full scope of Friday's massacre, which followed an explosion in nearby Oslo that killed seven and that police say was set off by the same suspect. The mass shootings are among the worst in history.
Many prayers for the people of Norway.:(
From the NY Times -
Sounds like a home-grown terrorist - like Timothy McVeigh (Oklahoma City), Eric Rudolph (Atlanta Olympics bombing and abortion clinics), and Scott Roeder (murder of Dr. Tiller).Quote:
The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a 32-year-old man, whom they identified as a Christian fundamentalist with right-wing connections
This guy sounds like pure evil. It appears that the car bomb in Oslo was not the prime focus - he was after the young people on the island. The car bombing was a diversion - to keep the police occupied.
The death toll is now 85, and could possibly rise to 98.
What a horrible thing to have happened.:(:( So many people just
gunned down. He actually killed more people with an automatic weapon
than he did with the bomb.:( It's just madness.
The "enemy within" is so frightening to me. Just like Timothy McVeigh - these people look just like you and me. Every bit as full of hate and enamored of violence as any jihadist.
Distruction, violence, death -- all in the name of ... what?
OMG this is so chocking..............
what a monster that man is :mad::mad::mad:!!
I can only imagine the immense sadness in those families who lost one of their kids there.......
This tragedy marks the end of Norway's innocence
The idyllic country that basked in wealth, equality and beauty must now confront its demons.
By Anthony Browne
7:36PM BST 23 Jul 2011
Norway is like a heart-achingly beautiful village the size of a country, with a quality of life, wealth and social equality that few in Britain could dream of. But this idyll - repeatedly recognised by the United Nations as the best country on Earth to live - has been utterly, incomprehensibly shattered.
The four million Norwegians are flag-wavingly proud of their country, and proud above all of doing good in the world. They are always the peace-brokers and peacekeepers, the givers of Nobel Prizes, the biggest donors of foreign aid per capita on the planet. Unlike most European countries, they are unencumbered by any national or imperial guilt.
It is a country of incredible trust, where King Harald proudly rides the Oslo tram alongside his subjects, and where crime is so low that people often don’t lock their doors. When, as a small child, I got lost in Oslo with my brother and sister, it didn’t really matter — strangers are never a threat, but a helping hand. There is no class system. It has such a generous welfare state, it is basically impossible to be poor.
In short, it is difficult to think of a place less likely to suffer the worst mass shooting in history - nor a place more likely to have its innocence shattered by it. If the killer had been a foreigner - an utlendling - they might have found it more easily explicable. But a blond Norwegian farmer? What has happened to the country?
Today, I am going to a huge family reunion in Norway, which includes a cousin who felt the blast of the bomb in her suburban Oslo home. I know the country I arrive in will be very different from the one I have known all my life - and the one where my father met my Norwegian mother half a century ago.
Norwegians are not normally given to anguished introspection about their nation. The annual UN report singing its praises is greeted with a shrug of the shoulders, because they are all conscious that they have been living in an astonishing golden age.
For most of its history, Norway was under the control of Sweden or Denmark, with Norwegians very much second-class citizens. Even after independence - celebrated with fervour every year - the country was still poor and isolated, with little but fish to live off. Things weren’t helped by the Nazi occupation, during which my grandfather was imprisoned for working for the resistance.
So until the 1960s, Norway was a poor, backwards country. Then it struck oil, and never looked back. The government’s main budget problem is what to do with its huge surpluses - apart from add to the vast sovereign wealth fund built up for its citizens. Billions of krone are spent on building long road tunnels through granite rock to tiny, remote communities. The electricity is all hydroelectric, but the power stations are buried tastefully inside the mountains. It is the most beautiful country in Europe, although it gets few tourists because its petro-currency makes it excruciatingly expensive.
Yet as the attacks show, the country has a dark side. Norwegians have, until very recently, had very little contact with the outside world – they couldn’t afford to travel, and no one went to visit.
In recent years, however, Norway started receiving immigration from around the world, and Islam has become the second biggest religion. Given Norway’s homogenous insularity, the impact of such different cultures has been even bigger than it was in Britain in the 1960s. Casual racism is rife. Only in Norway have I heard someone order a taxi and request that the driver is white. News reports can display an unwitting racism that is shocking to British ears. There is a widespread unease about the way the country is changing, which even mainstream politicians play on, with anti-immigration rhetoric more inflammatory than anything you will hear in Britain.
Many Norwegians don’t want their idyll spoiled, by either joining the EU, or by turning multicultural - and it is this nativist side of the country that appears to have turned horrifyingly murderous. Clearly, Norway must confront its racist demons, in much the same way that Britain has. But the shock of the attack could also crystallise the fears of many Norwegians that they don’t like the way the country is going, and actually spur anti-immigration sentiment. Either way, Norway’s innocence has come to a tragic and horrifying end.
Anthony Browne is manifesto director for the Mayor of London’s re-election campaign
The Telegraph