International

SP leader Emile Roemer has reacted with horror to the bomb attack and shootings in Norway, joining in the sentiments expressed by Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt who expressed his solidarity with the words, ‘We are all Norwegians’. Roemer added that ‘a cowardly act such as this touches every free society. What happened yesterday in Norway can never be entirely ruled out in our own country.'

At least eighty-five people lost their lives in the two attacks. As well as the government centre in Oslo, a youth camp of the governing Labour Party was a target of an attack. The Norwegian police are proceeding on the basis that this was not an act of international terrorism, but an internal attack on the political system. In a message to the person or persons responsible for the attack Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told them that “you cannot destroy our democracy or our ideals for a better world.”

The attacks represent the biggest act of terror in Norway since the Second World War. Foreign Affairs spokesman Harry van Bommel will today deliver a message of sympathy to Eva Bugge, Norwegian ambassador to the Netherlands.