OSLO — Norway suffered twin attacks on Friday when powerful explosions shook the govt. center here and, shortly when, a gunman stalked youths at an island summer camp for young members of the governing Labor Party. The police arrested a Norwegian in reference to each attacks, that killed a minimum of sixteen individuals and surprised this ordinarily placid nation.
The explosions, from one or a lot of bombs, turned Oslo, a tidy Scandinavian capital, into a scene paying homage to terrorist attacks in Beirut or Baghdad or Oklahoma town, panicking individuals and blowing out windows of many government buildings, as well as one housing the workplace of the Norwegian prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg, who was unharmed.
The state tv broadcaster, citing the police, said seven individuals had been killed and a minimum of fifteen wounded within the explosions, that they said looked as if it would be an act of domestic terrorism.
Even as the police locked down an outsized space of the town when the blasts, a person dressed as a police officer entered the youth camp on the island of Utoya, concerning nineteen miles northwest of Oslo, a Norwegian security official said, and opened fireplace. “He said it had been a routine sign on reference to the phobia attack in Oslo,” one witness told VG Nett, the online website of a national newspaper.
Terrified youths jumped into the water to flee. “Kids have began to swim in an exceedingly panic, and Utoya is much from the mainland,” said Bjorn Jarle Roberg-Larsen, a Labor Party member who spoke by phone with teenagers on the island, that has no bridge to the mainland. “Others are hiding. Those I spoke with don’t need to speak a lot of. They’re scared to death.”
Many couldn't flee in time. The Oslo police said that 9 or ten individuals were killed at the camp, however that they expected the toll to rise. A witness on the island told the state broadcaster that he saw twenty to twenty five bodies on the island, consistent with The Associated Press.
After the shooting, the police seized a 32-year-old Norwegian man on the island, consistent with the police and Justice Minister Knut Storberget. The acting chief of police, Sveinung Sponheim, said the suspect, who isn't known to own any ties to Islamic extremists, had additionally been seen in Oslo before the explosions. The police and alternative authorities declined to mention what the suspect’s motivations may need been, however several speculated that the target was Mr. Stoltenberg’s liberal government.
“The police have each reason to believe there's a affiliation between the explosions and what happened at Utoya,” the police said. They said they later recovered explosives on the island.
As the investigations continued, the police asked individuals to go away the middle of Oslo, keep indoors and limit their cellphone use. They additionally said they'd initiate border checks.
The attacks bewildered a nation higher known for its active diplomacy and peacekeeping missions than as a target for extremists.
In Oslo, workplace employees and civil servants said that a minimum of 2 blasts, that ripped through the cluster of contemporary workplace buildings round the central Einar Gerhardsen plaza, echoed across the town in fast succession around 3:20 p.m. local time. big clouds of light-colored smoke rose many feet as a fireplace burned in one amongst the broken structures, a six-story workplace building that homes the Oil Ministry.
The force of the explosions blew out nearly each window within the 17-story workplace building across the road from the Oil Ministry, and therefore the streets on both sides were strewn with glass and debris. The police examined the debris in search of clues.
Mr. Stoltenberg’s workplace is on the sixteenth floor in an exceedingly towering rectangular block whose facade and lower floors were broken. The Justice Ministry additionally has its offices within the building.
Norwegian authorities said they believed that variety of tourists were within the central district at the time of the explosion, which the toll would surely are higher if not for the actual fact that several Norwegians were on vacation and lots of a lot of had left their offices early for the weekend.
“Luckily, it’s terribly empty,” said Stale Sandberg, who works in an exceedingly government agency a couple of blocks down the road from the prime minister’s workplace.
After the explosions, the town crammed with an unfamiliar sense of vulnerability. “We heard 2 loud bangs and then we have a tendency to saw this yellow smoke returning from the govt. buildings,” said Jeppe Bucher, 18, who works on a ferry boat but a mile from the bomb website. “There was construction around there, therefore we have a tendency to thought it had been a building being torn down.”
He added, “Of course I’m scared, as a result of Norway is such a neutral country.”
American counterterrorism officers cautioned that Norway’s own homegrown extremists, with unknown grievances, can be liable for the attacks.
Initial reports targeted on the chance of Islamic militants, above all Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the worldwide Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. yank officers said the cluster was previously unknown and won't even exist.
Still, there was ample reason for concern that terrorists may well be accountable. In 2004 and once more in 2008, the No. two leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over when the death of Osama bin Laden, threatened Norway attributable to its support of the American-led NATO military operation in Afghanistan.
Norway has concerning 550 troopers and 3 medevac helicopters in northern Afghanistan, a Norwegian defense official said. the govt. has indicated that it'll still support the Afghan operations as long because the alliance wants partners on the bottom.
Terrorism specialists said that though the authorities ultimately dominated out terrorism because the explanation for Friday’s assaults, other forms of teams or people were mimicking Al Qaeda’s signature brutality and multiple attacks.
“If it will prove to be somebody with a lot of political motivations, it shows these teams are learning from what they see from Al Qaeda,” said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation in Washington. “One lesson I exclude from this is often that attacks, particularly within the West, are reaching to move to automatic weapons.”
Muslim leaders in Norway swiftly condemned the attacks. “This is our homeland, this is often my homeland,” said Mehtab Afsar, secretary general of the Islamic Council of Norway. “I condemn these attacks, and therefore the Islamic Council of Norway condemns these attacks, whoever is behind them.”
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