Police were searching a remote farm that was the most recent home of the man suspected of twin attacks on Norway that killed at least 94 people, Norwegian police said Saturday.
They charged a 32-year-old Norwegian man with planting explosives in central Oslo on Friday and a shooting spree on an isolated island hours later, in what added up to the largest attack on Norway since World War II. The death toll rose dramatically overnight and appeared likely to continue to rise, as authorities searched for victims on the island northwest of Oslo.
“What we know is that he is right wing and he is Christian fundamentalist,” deputy police chief Roger Andresen said Saturday morning at a televised news conference. “We have not been able to link him up to an anti-Islamic group.” He said that the suspect had not been arrested before, and that police were unsure if he had acted alone.
“We find him responsible for both of the attacks,” Andresen said. “At the moment we have no other people to arrest.”
Norwegian media identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik and posted pictures of the blond and blue-eyed Norwegian. A security official speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not allowed to release the name publicly said that the name was correct.
Police said that at least 87 people were killed on the island and seven others died in the earlier bombing in Oslo. Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim said Saturday that the Oslo blast was caused by a car bomb.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said that police were investigating many angles in the attacks, including the possibility of international support for the suspect.
“We are in touch with other country’s security services,” Stoltenberg said at an impromptu news conference outside a makeshift hospital near Utoya Island, where he had visited with the injured and their families. “It is very important to see if there are international connections here.”
Stoltenberg said that the broader implications of the attacks were difficult to gauge. “It’s too early to say how this will change Norwegian society,” he said. “But I hope we will be able to maintain some of the most important things . . . Norway is a society where we have a close relationship between politicians and the people,” and, he said, he hoped that would not change.
In Oslo, Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told reporters that police were still investigating deaths at the island and trying to identify bodies. He said that some people may have drowned trying to swim away from the island to escape the shooting. Police said Saturday that it took them 45 minutes to reach the scene.
He said that police were still trying to piece together the suspect’s motives.
“The politically motivated violence that Norway has seen in the modern age has come from the extreme rightist side,” Stoere said. “This is a phenomenon that we have addressed very seriously.”
A Twitter account with Breivik’s name and photo has a single post, from July 17: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests,” slightly misquoting British philosopher John Stuart Mill. A Facebook account linked to Breivik cites his favorite books as John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and George Orwell’s 1984, among others. Another interest is hunting. It was not possible to confirm if the Twitter and Facebook accounts and posts belonged to the suspect in the shooting.
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