NYTimes | It has been a rite of passage for Norway’s liberal elite for decades: a summer camp set on a verdant Nordic isle called Utoya, where this week hundreds of young people gathered to meet government ministers, dive into election strategy sessions and maybe find a little summer romance.But for Helen Andreassen, a 21-year-old aspiring politician, a celebration of bright futures became something horrifyingly different when she and her friends jumped from a second-story window to escape the bullets of a man who was hunting them specifically because of their politics.
They ran for their lives, she said, tumbling down the rocky heights to the sea shore, hoping the man in the police officer’s uniform would not pursue them into the water. But he kept shooting.
“He was standing just by the water, using his rifle, just taking his time, aiming and shooting,” Ms. Andreassen said. “It was a slaughter of young children."
For more than an hour, the gunman stalked the forests and steep, rocky shores of the island. There were no bridges to provide escape. Time was on his side.
The young people desperately silenced their cellphones and stripped off colorful clothing. But the shooter was methodical. After killing several people on one part of the island, he went to the other, and, dressed in his police uniform, calmly convinced the children huddled there that he meant to save them. When they emerged into the open, he fired again and again.
“He shot a boy in the back,” said Stine Renate Haaheim, 27, a member of Parliament who was also among those hiding. “I saw that some people were falling, and we turned around and ran. At that point I didn’t look back.”
The police have identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, who in his writings has portrayed himself as a modern knight, charged with driving out Islam and immigrants and the political correctness that he said had been wrongly invited into Norway and was thriving there.
The campers at Utoya appeared to be the embodiment of his hatred.
