Norway mourn after blood shed
NORWAY: One week after an anti-Muslim extremist killed 77 people in a bombing and shooting rampage Norway has begun burying the dead people.
Mourners of all ages vowed they would not let the massacre threaten their country’s openness and democracy.
The first victim to be laid down by them was an 18-year-old Muslim girl. The gunman opened fire at a political youth camp and bombed the government headquarters in Oslo.
Bano Rashid, a Kurdish immigrant from Iraq, was buried in a Muslim rite after a funeral service yesterday in the Nesodden church in the outskirts of the capital, Oslo.
Sobbing youth accompanied her coffin, which was draped in a Kurdish flag.
The attack will “not destroy Norway’s commitment to democracy, tolerance and fighting racism”, Labor Party youth-wing leader Eskil Pedersen said at a memorial service in Oslo.
Mr Pedersen, who was on the island retreat of Utoya when the gunman’s attack began, said: “Long before he stands before a court, we can say, He has lost.”
He said the youth organisation would return to Utoya next year for its annual summer gathering, a tradition that stretches back decades.
Police raised the death toll to 77, from 76, and said all those killed in the July 22 attacks in Oslo and on Utoya have now been identified and those reported missing have been accounted for.
Norway’s Police Security Service said the threat from right-wing extremists remains unchanged after Anders Behring Breivik’s attack.
(source: The Australian)
