Death toll in Norway attacks cut from 93 to 76
A young couple holds roses, part of an estimated 100,000 people who gathered in Oslo town center for a vigil following Friday’s twin extremist attacks on July 25, 2011 in Oslo, Norway. Anders Behring Breivik, 32, claimed that he has ‘two more cells’ working with him as he appeared in court today following a bomb blast at a government building in Oslo and a shooting massacre on nearby Utoya Island that killed at least 76 people in all. The death toll was originally reported as 93. Breivik has been detained for eight weeks, four of which in full isolation.
Norway police on Monday lowered the combined death toll from the bombing in downtown Oslo and shooting attack on nearby Utoya island from 93 to 76 people killed.
Police official Oeystein Maeland said the number of people killed in the bombing went up by one to eight, while the count from the mass shooting fell from 86 to 68.
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Police cited confusion in the wake of the shooting as the reason for the significant death toll revision. Some bodies were double counted, they said.
"On Friday afternoon the situation was very chaotic," Maeland told a news conference in Oslo. "The police had to put the accent on helping the wounded and providing emergency care, it's possible that victims were counted several times."
He explained that bodies were difficult to count because they were spread all over the island, the Associated Press reports.
However, Maeland said the death toll from the shooting at the ruling Labor Party youth camp on Utoya island could still go up because the search for bodies is continuing.
In addition to those killed, at least 96 people were injured in the attacks. Police have declined to release a number for those people thought to still be missing.
The 32-year old suspect in the twin attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, made his first court appearance Monday at a closed hearing in Oslo. He has confessed to both attacks, but denied he had committed any crime.
The judge in the case said that Behring Breivik had mentioned "two other cells” during his first court appearance earlier on Monday.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg led Norway in a minute of silence for the victims of the attacks, the deadliest in Norway since World War II, the AP says.