Terror attacks in Norway: at least 91 dead.

A gunman dressed as a police officer has opened fire at a political youth camp in Norway and a bomb has been detonated outside the Prime Minister’s Office in the capital Oslo. The death toll is still rising. 84 were killed in the youth camp shooting – the single most deadly attack by a lone gunman in the world and with victims who were mostly children. Seven have been killed in the Oslo bombing.

This from the Sydney Morning Herald:

A Home-grown terrorist set off an explosion that ripped open buildings in the heart of Norway’s government, and then went to a summer camp dressed as a police officer and gunned down youths as they ran and even swam for their lives.

Police say at least 84 people were killed in the shooting spree at the youth camp on the island of Utoeya where hundreds of youth were attending an event organised by the youth wing of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s Labour Party.

Norway’s national broadcaster, NRK, has named the suspect in the attacks as Anders Behring Breivik.

An official said the murderer didn’t appear to have any links to terrorist organisations and that this appeared to be ‘Norway’s Oklahoma and not Norway’s World Trade Centre’ referring to the Oklahoma City bombings by homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh who was later executed in the United States.

The attacker joined Twitter on Monday. His first and only tweet read: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests.”

Mamamia reader Ingrid is from Norway but is living in Sydney. She was woken this morning by a text message. She writes:

“I was woken up this morning at 5 am (Norway is 8 hours behind Sydney in time difference) as I received a text from my dad saying: Terror in Oslo. Several people are dead.

I jumped out of bed to check the news and also to call home. It was such a shock to see the images on TV, it’s not something you imagine will happen to your country. I also kept checking Facebook frantically to see if my friends were okay.

Thankfully my friends and family are safe. I couldn’t get a hold of my best friend for a while and that was really scary. It turns out she was safe at work, but it’s only 400 meters from where the bomb was set off so the whole building was shaking.

Norway has many political parties, and the current government consists of 3 parties in a coalition – the Labour Party, the Centre Party and the Socialistic Left Party. It was the Labour Party’s camp at Utøya as well as the government building which were attacked.

Oslo is a small capital with less than 600,000 inhabitants. Utøya is an island 30 km away from Oslo which each year hosts a summer camp for youths aged 15-20 involved in the Labour party. The Prime Minister was meant to go there tomorrow to visit the camp.

There are no confirmed theories of why this happened, although Norway is a member of NATO and are involved in the war in Afghanistan, Iraq & Libya. A 32 year old Norwegian man has been arrested so far and police are searching through his home at the moment.

When the Prime Minister & the Minister for justice held a press conference this morning – I couldn’t stop crying. I feel so sad for the victims, the victims families and my country has lost its innocence.”

This story is still unfolding.

WARNING: The below footage taken directly after the bomb blast may be distressing to some.