Oslo suspect fringe righty … surprised?

Just learned about the news from over at Skeptic Money. As I posted yesterday, seven were reported to have been killed in the Oslo attacks this week.

Now, the BBC has reported that 85 are dead from the youth camp attack that also occurred on a nearby island in Norway. The suspect is Anders Behring Breivik, 32, who was apparently a fringe right-winger. He already has a Wikipedia entry. Some of his writings are recorded at this link, which references a site called Document.no, described on Wikipedia as “an Anti-Islam[1]anti-immigration[2] and pro-Israel[3] citizen journalistic website for political analysis, commentary, essays and reportage.” You will have to use Google and translate the above-linked writings.

According to local deputy police chief Roger Andresen in Norway:

We have no more information than … what has been found on [his] own websites, which is that it goes towards the right and that it is, so to speak, Christian fundamentalist.

If that’s true, religious fanaticism strikes again.

Images from Oslo attacks (warning: graphic)

As of Friday afternoon, seven were reported dead and 15 injured following an explosion and shooting in Oslo, Norway. Here are some photographs:

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The attack targeted government buildings, including a building containing the prime minister’s office. The shooting apparently took place at a Labor Party summer camp, in which most members were 15-16 years old.

A snippet from the most recent New York Times article:

“The situation’s gone from bad to worse,” said Runar Kvernen, spokesman for the National Police Directorate under the Ministry of Justice and Police, adding that most of the children at the camp were 15 and 16 years old.

A witness on the island told the state broadcaster that he saw between 20 and 25 bodies on the island after the shooting at the youth camp, The Associated Press reported. There was no official confirmation of deaths on the island.

Images of damaged government buildings, calling to mind past terror attacks in Beirut or Baghdad or Oklahoma City, rattled residents of this ordinarily peaceful Scandinavian nation that has been largely spared terror attacks in recent years. As fear of further attacks gripped the capital, police moved to lockdown large areas of the city center, where the streets were already nearly deserted.

By nightfall in Norway, a fuller picture began to emerge of apparently coordinated terror attacks. Norwegian news media, citing the police, said a shooting suspect had been arrested and that he was connected to the Oslo explosions.

Though the police did not immediately connect the explosions with terrorism, the mangled wreckage of a car could be seen in front of Oslo’s main government building, flipped on its side, damaged so badly that its make and color were not apparent, and a large area of sidewalk pavement was completely blown away. Reports in local media said that officials were assuming it was a deliberate bombing.

A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism. The message said the attack was a response to Norwegian forces’ presence in Afghanistan and to unspecified insults to the Prophet Muhammad. “We have warned since the Stockholm raid of more operations,” the group said, according to Mr. McCants’ translation, apparently referring to a bombing in Sweden in December 2010. “What you see is only the beginning, and there is more to come.” The claim could not be confirmed. It is not uncommon for terrorist groups to advance claims of responsibility for high-profile attacks, only to have the claims prove to be spurious.