By VANESSA FUHRMANS And SVEN GRUNDBERG
OSLO—A Norwegian man confessed to killing nearly 100 people in a pair of attacks on Friday, calling his rampage "atrocious" but "necessary."Photos: Attacks in Norway
The attacks, including the bombing of a government building in Oslo and a shooting spree at a Labor Party youth camp on a nearby island, left at least 93 people dead in what authorities described as a deranged attempt to declare war on the forces of multiculturalism and pluralism that have taken hold in Norway and much of Europe.
Mr. Breivik's manifesto against the "Islamization of Western Europe" echoed sentiment that has found a renewed voice on the fringes of mainstream politics from Sweden to Italy. Populist politicians have won votes and influence by arguing that Europe is letting in too many people, especially Muslims who they say don't accept Western values and who, according to these politicians, cause crime and unemployment.
The view that fueled Mr. Breivik's extremism "is a sentiment you find in all European countries," said Thomas Hegghammer, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo.
Norway, a relatively wealthy, sparsely populated country, has little recent history of political extremism, much less terrorism. That it was the site of such an attack, even if by an isolated gunman, has unleashed concern across Europe that the anti-immigrant underswell that has swept much of the Continent in recent years could metastasize suddenly and unexpectedly into violence.
As flags across the city hung at half-staff, hundreds of people flocked in the rain Sunday to Oslo Cathedral, where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, King Harald of Norway and other leaders attended a memorial service. Outside, many onlookers openly wept and milled about for hours as they contributed to a growing carpet of flowers and candles.
More
- Norway Searches for Answers
- Attacks Cast Light on Far-Right Views
- Suspect's Online Musings Hold Clues
- Breivik Railed Against Labor Party
- Opinion: Inside the Mind of the Oslo Murderer
- Police Warned of Rising Extremism
- Suspect Released YouTube Video
- Discussion: Is There a Need for a Religious-Hatred Summit?
- Scandinavian Countries Have Recent History of Attacks
Police said at least 86 people, many of them teenagers, were killed in the Friday-afternoon shooting at a summer camp for the youth wing of the Labor Party.
About 600 people were present at the time of the attack, which occurred on the island of Utoya north of Oslo. The rampage followed the bombing of government offices in the Norwegian capital that killed at least seven.
The mass shooting on the island went on for more than an hour before a SWAT team arrived. Police were continuing to search for victims and said the death toll could rise when several people missing on the island are accounted for.
A police spokesman said Mr. Breivik, who is 32, set off a car bomb in central Oslo, then traveled to Utoya. They said he used two weapons, a handgun and an automatic weapon, to shoot indiscriminately at people, most of them teens, for over an hour.
The woodsy lake island has for decades been the site of a summer camp for the Labor Party's next generation, a place Prime Minister Stoltenberg described over the weekend as "the paradise of my youth."
In his online writings, Mr. Breivik saw the party youth movement and its campaigns to bring the country's immigrant youth into its fold as a manifestation of multiculturalism gone wrong and the "terrorizing of political conservatives."
Adrian Pracon, a 21-year-old former camper who had returned this summer to work in the information booth, recalled running through the woods and jumping in the water with dozens of others in an effort to escape to the mainland. But he said his clothes grew too heavy with water and forced him back to shore, where Mr. Breivik was.
"I begged him not to shoot me, and he didn't," Mr. Pracon said in a telephone interview from his bed in a nearby hospital. "He wanted to shoot the people still in the water first."
By then, he said, Mr. Breivik had switched to firing single rounds, presumably to save bullets. "He was so cold and concentrated" as he continued to walk and shoot the fleeing teens, Mr. Pracon said.
When the gunman returned an hour later to where Mr. Pracon and nearly 20 others lay behind rocks on the shore, Mr. Pracon said he played dead while the shooter killed many of those around him. The shooter put a bullet in Mr. Pracon's shoulder "but I didn't move," the 21-year-old said.
Police said that when they found Mr. Breivik on the island, he surrendered immediately. They said he was answering questions, adding that the interrogation was likely to continue for several days.
In Norway, anti-immigrant opinions have found few mainstream platforms. Unlike other Scandinavian countries, including Sweden and Denmark, Norway doesn't have a mainstream far-right party.
Norway Attacks
See the locations of an explosion in Oslo and an attack at a youth camp.Mr. Breivik was once a member of Norway's conservative, populist Progress Party, the second-largest group after the Labor Party. The Progress Party has taken a hard line on immigration in the past but less so than populist anti-foreigner parties that have taken hold elsewhere in Scandinavia.
Downtown Oslo
Even with modest immigration inflows, the Progress Party's membership has more than doubled and put pressure on Norway's ruling coalition in recent years to propose tighter immigration measures.
—Charles Duxbury and Katarina Gustafsson contributed to this article. Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at vanessa.fuhrmans@wsj.com
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