Norwegian police are still investigating whether an anti-immigration zealot who killed 77 people in central Oslo and on a nearby wooded island was acting alone or with others.
Anders Behring Breivik (32) has been detained in solitary detention at a prison near the Norwegian capital after confessing to the killings, the most serious attack in the Nordic country since World War Two.
“We are still trying to clarify whether he was alone or not,” police prosecutor Christian Hatlo told reporters on Tuesday.
No one else is currently under suspicion over the bombing in Oslo and shooting spree at Utøeya Island some 44km away on July 22.
“So far there is nothing to indicate that he was working with anyone. But we can’t be sure, so we are still investigating,” he said.
Inspectors will question Breivik again this week, the official said.
“Now we will confront him with the evidence that we have gathered,” Hatlo said.
‘The hardest test’
Earlier on Tuesday two victims of the attacks were buried in Oslo. At the funeral of 18-year-old Mona Abdinur, killed on Utøeya Island, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Abdninur’s family and all of Norway had been tested.
“You have been given the hardest test of all,” he said.
“In the midst of grief and despair I want you to know you are not alone. We are many who cry with you. You are a small family but you are part of the big Norwegian family,” he said.
Stoltenberg’s response to the attacks has won praise among Norwegians and his Labour Party, whose youth camp on Utøeya Island was a target of Breivik’s rampage, has soared to its highest popularity in more than a decade six weeks before nationwide local elections.
About 40.5% gave the party their support in a poll of 974 people conducted by TNS Gallup for Norwegian broadcaster TV2 between July 26 and 30.
That’s a 9.2% surge, mostly at the expense of the Conservatives, in a field of eight parties.
“People are gathering around the Labour Party in an expression of national unity,” election researcher Jo Saglie at the Institute for Social Research in Oslo told Reuters.
Outside Parliament several cards left at the entrance along with flowers read “Thank you Jens” and “Norway is lucky to have leaders who care”. — Reuters