Norwegian media point to lone gunman, naming him and publishing photos
Update 9:20 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The death toll had risen to 87 by Saturday morning in Oslo, Norway, from a bomb at a government office and a gunman’s shooting spree at a youth political camp near the city. It is Europe’s worst attack since the 2004 bombings in Madrid, and Europeans are reacting with shock and worry, given than no group has claimed the concerted attack.
Norwegian media are saying it is the work of a single, lone extremist and they have published his name and photos, although there is no official confirmation of the information (see Sydney Morning Herald‘s report from Australia).
Police ordered people out of the city centre after the 15:30 attacks on the island of Utoya, where the Labour Party’s camp was held, and at the offices of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who was out of the office at the time.
The killer at the political camp was dressed as a police office, and entered saying he was checking security immediately after the bomb went off in the city centre. He was arrested, but only after he managed to “methodically” shoot and kill at least 80 people. Authorities in Norway say he is known to them, a 32-year-old Norwegian, and that he never worked for the police force. Norwegian media are speculating that he is a right-wing extremist who has posted online anti-Islam material.
Other European media note that this is the first time Norway has been the focus of such a terrorist attempt and ask if it is linked to Norway’s role in Afghanistan, as a member of Nato, or if the attacks may have been directed at the offices of the country’s largest tabloid, Verdens Gang, whose offices are near the prime minister’s. The Telegraph in the UK cites WikiLeaks cables, saying Norway’s security services have been unprepared for terrorist attacks.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Le Monde (Fr), NZZ (Ger), Telegraph, TSR (Fr)
Update 2, 23 July GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Government offices in the centre of Oslo appear to have been the target of at least one bomb that went off Friday afternoon 22 July at 15:6, killing seven people and injuring several more, officials have confirmed. Shortly afterwards, a gunman attacked a political youth camp on an island near the city, killing 80 people there. No group has claimed the attack. See main story on GenevaLunch.
Links to other sites: BBC, Reuters and The Foreigner (Norway)
A former student visited his old elementary school, Tasso da Silveira school, in what NPR in the US describes as “a working-class neighborhood in western Rio”, Brazil, and opened fired Thursday 7 April, killing 11 others before he died, although it is not clear if he turned the gun on himself or if police shot him. Initial reports were that 13 people had died.
Four others are “gravely injured” and another eight suffered lesser injuries.
“Rio is a city rife with drug-gang violence in its vast slums, but school shootings are rare. The gunman had no criminal history, Police Chief Martha Rocha told a news conference.” He reportedly left a rambling letter at the site of the crime, with instructions for his funeral that make references to sexual purity.
The local governor has ordered seven days of morning in Rio de Janeiro.
Links to other sites: Guardian, The Rio Times
Two US airmen died after a man opened fire on a US Air Force bus in front of terminal 2 at the Frankfurt international airport Wednesday afternoon. Two other airmen were injured.
The driver and a passenger were killed, both of them shot in the head and the chest, apparently after fight broke out on the bus, and while German authorities have not identified the gunman, Kosovo’s interior minister says he was told by German police the man is from Kosovo, although the information was contradicted by others.
The gunman fled the scene of the shooting and a suspect was arrested inside the airport shortly afterwards.
Links to other sites: Guardian, Washington Post
AP video
Samuel Hengel, the 15-year-old student in Marinette, Wisconsin, north of Green Bay in the US, who held then released 24 hostages and then shot and injured himself, died in hospital 30 November. His parents said in a statement that they were “devastated and heartbroken” at the events, but had no idea why it happened.
When police entered the schoolroom after a six-hour stand-off, with the school area cordoned off, Hengel shot himself. The boy, who was joined by his family at the hospital, was said by a former teacher and family friend to have had problems at school but he also described the youth as “one of the sweetest kids you ever want to know.”
Links to other sites: Green Bay Press-Gazette, Huffington Post, LA Times, Sky News
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 29-year-old gunman who 4 October shot a 15-year-old girl, Marina, in Petit-Lancy, leaving her in critical condition and in an artificial coma more than a week after the incident, had been fired 10 days earlier by the security agency Securitas, an investigation by the TSR public television show Infrarouge has discovered.
The agency says that the man was fired during his trial period for, reportedly, unsatisfactory work and behaviour not in line with their requirements, but his job did not involve being armed, nor did he have a gun license for his job. He appears to have acquired a personal gun license and to have obtained the gun from a dealer in Geneva.
The gunman also injured a young man when the bullet that lodged in Marina first passed through the youth’s cheek. The two were part of a group of youths who jostled the man, who had been drinking heavily, when they tried to insist that he leave the area near a school, after a dispute. He then went to his car, picked up a gun and took aim.
Once he realized the girl had fallen, he stayed at the scene of the accident and called police on his mobile phone to report the shooting.
Background, GenevaLunch
Conches, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva police say a 52-year-old Vaud man shot and killed his 42-year-old companion and then killed himself at around 8:00 on 4 October. Their blood-covered bodies were found by their children who alerted the authorities.
Geneva police said the children heard a loud “crack” before finding their parents’ bodies.
Three of the minors, aged 10, 7 and 5 were home at the time of the incident. The oldest child, 14, was in school.
The woman, a Geneva native, lived with her children on chemin de Pré-l’Hermine, in Conches, canton Geneva.
[Ed. Note: Geneva police have made a correction to their previous statement concerning the age of one of the victims and added new details surrounding the shooting. The second victim, police say, is a 24-year-old and not a 14-year-old as previously identified.]
Petit-Lancy, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A 29-year-old man has been arrested after shooting two people, including a 15-year-old girl, during an argument that occurred around 19:00, Sunday 3 October in Petit-Lancy, a commune of Lancy in canton Geneva.
The 15-year-old is fighting for her life after being shot in the head and a 24-year-old man is recuperating after being grazed in the face by a bullet.
According to police, the argument started after the 29-year-old man who had been drinking heavily, accosted a group of girls at the Caroline school park in Petit-Lancy. The teens called two male friends who then confronted, and pushed, the aggressor.
The man, police says, felt “humiliated,” left and came back armed with a gun.
The group started to run after being confronted by the armed man who shot one time towards the 24-year-old man. The bullet grazed him on the cheek and then continued its trajectory and struck the 15-year-old in the head.
According to police, the shooter seemed to have realized what he had done, approached the fallen teen to help her and called police from his mobile phone. The 29-year-old then waited, by the girl’s side, for authorities to arrive.
The girl is in critical condition at the University Hospital in Geneva; the shooter faces attempted murder charges.
Biel/Bienne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Police captured the 67-year-old retired man who has been on the run for a week after he shot and critically injured a policeman. He was spotted by police shortly after 06:00 Friday morning 17 September, walking along a path near Bienne. The police sent a dog after him, and the man was bitten and slightly injured by the dog, but he was unarmed and did not resist arrest. Police found the man thanks to a tip from a resident in the hamlet where he was found.
He had been the target of a week-long manhunt involving hundreds of police. Late Thursday local authorities held a press conference where they defended their efforts to find the man in the face of growing public criticism.
The man shot the policeman and fired other shots early in the morning 8 September after learning that his house would be re-possessed.
Biel/Bienne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - A 67-year-old gunman who critically injured a police office in Bienne last Wednesday 8 September is still on the loose and the manhunt for him continues, police say. The man went on a shooting spree, then holed himelf up in his house, which he then escaped. The incident appears to have been triggered by a letter he received earlier that day saying his home is being repossessed. School for younger children in the area is closed Monday, as a precaution, with older students attending classes elsewhere.
Bienne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Police say a man who fired several shots Thursday night 8 September, critically injuring a policeman at 01:00, has fled the home where he had barricaded himself. A huge manhunt has been launched, including in the woods near his home. The man is presumed to be armed.
He appears to have started his shooting spree after learning that his home would be auctioned off, reports TSR (Fre).
A gunman and six of the people he shot Monday morning in Bratislava, Slovakia, are dead, but police are releasing few other details. Fourteen people appear to have been injured in the shootings, in the capital’s Devinska Nova Ves suburban neighborhood, and bus service has been disrupted in the city.
Links to other sites: CNN, Slovak Spectator
Criticism is pouring in, from the president of the Philippines, Chinese authorities and others over the handling of a 10-hour hostage crisis by police in Manila Monday 23 August that resulted in the shooting deaths of eight tourists from Hong Kong. The tourist bus, carrying 21 Chinese visitors, was hijacked by a former Manila policeman, upset over the loss of his job. The number of confirmed dead is eight, according to Hong Kong authorities, but media reports in Manila have said as many as 10 people may have died.
Links to other sites: China Daily, CNN, Manila Standard Today, Xinhua
The Sellafield Nuclear Plant in Cumbria closed its doors and the public was urged to stay inside after a gunman killed 12 people, it appears, and injured others, three critically Wednesday morning, in the Lake District. Police believe they have found the body of the gunman, whom they have named as Derrick Bird, but details are still emeging, after the rampage.
Links to other sites: BBC, Telegraph and live updates blog from Guardian recaptures the day
St Louis, Missouri, USA (GenevaLunch) - A gunman killed three people and injured at least five others, three of them critically, at the offices of Swiss-Swedish multinational ABB in St Louis Thursday 7 January, according to police reports. The man entered the factory at 06:30. ABB was unable to give details or confirm more than the police information to wire services, at 19:35 Swiss time, saying the situation was still unclear. Initial media reports in the US indicate that the gunman was among those killed, and that he was a former employee who was in litigation with the company, but none of this has been confirmed officially.
Links to other sites: ABB, CNN, ats/Romandie (Fre)
Four people are dead after a lone gunman went on a shooting spree in the Espoo shopping centre near Helsinki, Finland Thursday morning 31 December. Another is injured. The man, who reportedly has a criminal record, opened fire on the second floor of the mall. The Times, UK, reports that “there are 1.6 million firearms in private hands in Finland, which has a population of just 5.3 million. It ranks in the top five nations in the world for civilian gun ownership.”
Links to other sites: The Times, UK,
The US Army major who went on a rampage and killed 13 people at a US Army base at Fort Hood, Texas 6 November has been charged with 13 counts of murder. Nidal Hasan has been in hospital since he was shot by police officers, and may be paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the wounds he sustained, according to his defense attorney who saw him in prison. AP, Reuters
Updated 18:30 A 17-year-old gunman killed 16 people and wounded many others Wednesday 11 March, 13 of them in his former secondary school in Winnenden, Germany, not far from Stuttgart. Rescue workers evacuated the school and police searched the area for more than three hours before the driver, freed, alerted them. Police and the youth exchanged fire before he apparently committed suicide. CNN, Reuters
A man went on a shooting spree in two towns, Geneva and Samson in Geneva County, Alabama, USA and killed 10 people as he sprayed a series of targets with semi-automatic fire, including his mother, whose house he burned, his grandmother and an aunt and uncle, according to the BBC. CNN
A gunman shot and killed 10 people at a vocational college in Kauhajoki, 330 km north of Helsinki, Finland, before turning the gun on himself. He later died in hospital. He was interviewed by police Monday after posting images of himself on the Internet, shooting; they decided they did not have enough evidence to revoke his firearms license. BBC
