The survivors were pulled out shivering and bleeding from the water and picked up from hiding places in the bushes and behind rocks around the island of Utoeya’s shoreline. And when darkness fell, the bodies were hauled out by searchlight.
Local residents in a flotilla of little motorboats and fishing dinghies, knowing that a maniacal gunman was in the midst of a killing spree, bravely sailed out to rescue the dozens of terrified youngsters trapped on the tiny island on Friday night.
Some youngsters were shot dead in the lake as they tried to swim to safety. Others who played dead were killed at close range where they lay by the meticulous killer who checked his victims for signs of life before moving on, roaming the island and killing everyone he could find.
He began shooting just after 5pm and it was two hours later before 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, wearing the uniform of a policeman and protective earplugs against his own deafening gunshots, apparently ran out of ammunition and was arrested by police SWAT teams sent from Oslo.
“We saw bodies in the water and children who hid in caves and on cliffs, they dared not come out until we said the gunman was taken, then they came crawling out weeping and screaming,” said Lise Berit Aronsen, who took her 4.3m boat out after hearing of the shootings on the radio. “It was horrible to see children in that state.”
As Norway heard the death toll from Friday’s two attacks rise from first two, then seven, then 10, deputy police chief Sveinung Sponhelm said that there would be more.
“This is the feedback from the island,” he said.
In the early hours of Saturday morning it leaped to 80, even as survivors were still being picked up and the injured being taken to hospital. By dawn it was clear that 91 people had died in the violence, 84 on the island and seven in the fertilizer bomb that had ripped through the Oslo government building just before 3:26pm, an hour-and-a-half before the island rampage, with hospital chiefs warning that there were so many badly hurt the toll could yet rise again.
Explosives have been recovered from a car, thought to have been left parked next to the Utoeya ferry.
“We greeted him as we got off the ferry,” said a student, who was leaving Utoeya just as Breivik, dressed as a policeman, was boarding the boat for the island. “We thought it was great how quickly the police had come to reassure us of our safety because we had heard of the bombing in Oslo.”
Police believe the man they now have in custody is responsible for the most terrible day of carnage in the country’s postwar history and that he first watched his bomb rip through the Oslo city center before driving the 32km to catch a boat to Utoeya.
There were about 600 people, mostly aged between 14 and 25, on the wooded island, just more than 400m long, for the annual summer camp of Norway’s Labor Party youth wing.
“It was about 5pm. We had heard about the bomb in Oslo and had been gathering to discuss it, because of course some people had families in Oslo and were worried,” said Adrian Pracon, one of the camp organizers. “This man came along and said he was from the police and told us he would help us and make sure that everyone was okay but that man, dressed as a policeman, was the shooter.”
“He had a machine gun, but it wasn’t set to automatic fire, it was on single shot. He wasn’t shooting like crazy or to make panic, he was shooting to kill people, with single bullets,” Pracon added.
Pracon said Breivik was “very cool and calm,” but looked like someone from a “Nazi movie.”
“He saw someone run into their tent and he just slowly went to the tent, opening it and shot the people in the tent. He had been very prepared for this. He said he would kill us all and everyone shall die,” he added.
Many people ran into the water, where they were picked off one by one or were pulled under the water by the weight of their clothes and boots, he said.
“I tried to call the police, but so did 200 others, so the system went down. I lay down and acted as if I were dead. He approached, 2m away. He was kicking people to see if they were alive or dead. I could hear him breathe, I could feel the warmth from the machine gun. I heard a big boom and I couldn’t hear anything in my left ear. I didn’t think I was hit, but it turned out I was shot quite badly. There were about 20 people dead just around me,” Pracon said.
Pracon was shot in the shoulder, but is expected to recover.
On Saturday, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg flew in by helicopter to visit other survivors who had been taken to a hotel in the town of Sundvolden to be interviewed by police and reunited with families.
“I know the young people and I know their parents,” he said. “And what hurts more is that this place where I have been every summer since 1979, and where I have experienced joy, commitment and security, has been hit by brutal violence — a youth paradise has been transformed into a hell.”
“What happened at Utoeya is a national tragedy,” Stoltenberg said.
Because of what was unfolding in Oslo many of the people on Utoeya were convinced that the gunshots were some kind of “sick joke.”
Hana Barzingi was one of them.
“I said to him ‘What the hell are you doing?’” Barzingi said.
In the confusion she was able to throw herself into the lake, hiding between bodies. She was lying in the water for two hours before she heard the police helicopters above and knew help was on its way and was pulled from the water by two local men in a boat.
However, even as rescue approached, many were too terrified to come out of hiding.
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