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Norway braces for more pain after twin attacks

Other News Materials 26 July 2011 11:21 (UTC +04:00)
Norway was bracing for more pain Tuesday as police said they were to start revealing the names of the 68 people shot dead on the Utoya island last week.
Norway braces for more pain after twin attacks

Norway was bracing for more pain Tuesday as police said they were to start revealing the names of the 68 people shot dead on the Utoya island last week, dpa reported.

"As soon as the names are verified, Oslo police district has been tasked to announce them," Oslo police chief Arnstein Gjengedal told public broadcaster NRK.

Instead of releasing the names all at once, Gjengedal said the there would be ongoing announcements after families had first been notified.

Anders Behring Breivik, the man charged in last week's attacks, was remanded in custody by an Oslo court on Monday and is to undergo psychiatric assessment.

Breivik was also charged with a bomb explosion in Oslo where eight were killed that preceded the massacre on Utoya at a youth camp organized by the Labour Party.

The prosecution said the acts constituted terror since they aimed at instilling general fear in the public at large.

Breivik had "acknowledged the bomb explosion ... and the shooting at Utoya" in police interviews and to the court, Judge Kim Heger said after Monday's closed-door session.

Prosecutor Christian Hatlo, who was present at the hearing, later told reporters Breivik had appeared "calm and unperturbed" during the hearing and also questioned Heger's ruling on holding the hearing behind closed doors.

Police and prosecution were mulling if Breivik could be charged with crimes against humanity, Hatlo was quoted as telling Oslo daily Aftenposten. The maximum sentence for such crimes is a 30-year prison term.

Police said they were continuing to search for people still unaccounted for, and said the death toll of 76 could change.

Aftenposten reported that 57 of the 68 dead at Utoya were found on the island while 10 were found in the waters near it or on the mainland. One of the wounded victims died in an Oslo hospital.

On Monday the country held a minute of silence and in the evening hundreds of thousands of Norwegians packed city centres across the country in a mass vigil not seen since the end of World War II.

"This evening the streets are filled with love," Crown Prince Haakon said in remarks at the square outside Oslo City Hall.

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