Norway carnage suspect says acted alone

The suspect in Norway's twin attacks that killed at least 92 and wounded 97 says he acted alone, police said today, in a "cruel" but "necessary" slaughter planned over many months.

As Norway's King and Prime Minister joined mourners in an Oslo cathedral for the victims of the country's worst violence since World War II, police said they are still trying to establish whether there was "one or several" shooters in Friday's attack on a Labour Party youth meeting on Utoeya island, northwest of Oslo.

"During questioning, he said he acted alone," Police Commissioner Sveinung Sponheim said. "We will try to verify this through our inquiry." Some witness accounts said a second gunman had taken part.

Sponheim said that the attacks wounded 97 people, giving a toll for the injured for the first time.

According to the police, seven people were killed and 30 wounded in the initial bombing of government buildings, while 85 were killed and 67 wounded during the shooting.

"There are still people missing in the governmental quarter" targeted in the bombing shortly before the shooting, a police spokesman told AFP without saying how many. Emergency workers were searching the shattered buildings in downtown Oslo for bodies today.

Anders Behring Breivik, 32, was arrested for allegedly shooting at least 85 people dead on the island and killing seven more in a car bomb explosion which ripped through central Oslo.

"He admitted responsibility," Behring Breivik's lawyer Geir Lippestad told Norwegian media. While there was no official confirmation of the man's identity, he was widely named by local media.

"He feels that it was cruel to have to carry out these acts but that, in his head, it was necessary," Lippestad said.

Oslo police spokesperson Viola Bjelland told AFP that the suspect was "cooperative."

King Harald V, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and other ministers attended mass at Oslo cathedral today morning.

A rambling 1,500-page tract apparently written by Behring Breivik said he has been preparing the "martyrdom operation" since at least autumn 2009.

The Internet document -- part diary, part bomb-making manual and part political rant in which he details his Islamophobia -- explains how he set up front mining and farming businesses to prepare the attacks for which he was arrested on Friday.

"The reasoning for this decision is to create a credible cover in case I am arrested in regards to the purchase and smuggling of explosives or components to explosives -- fertiliser," says the tract. It was unclear Sunday when the document had been put on the Internet.

As harrowing testimony emerged from the summer camp where scores of youngsters were mown down, Norway was struggling to understand how a country famed as a beacon of peace could experience such bloodshed on its soil.

"Never since the Second World War has our country been hit by a crime on this scale," Stoltenberg told journalists as police searched for more bodies on the idyllic Utoeya island near Oslo.

"Many of those who have died were friends. I know their parents and it happened at a place where I spent a long time as a young person... It was a paradise of my youth that has now been turned into hell."

The toll could rise further as the search continued for four or five people still missing from the island, aided by a mini-submarine and Red Cross scuba divers.

Blond-haired Behring Breivik described himself on his Facebook page as "conservative", "Christian", and interested in hunting and computer games like World of Warcraft and Modern Warfare 2, reports said.

He also described himself as director of Breivik Geofarm, an organic farm that may have given him access to chemicals used in the production of explosives.

Police spokesperson Roger Andersen described the suspect as a "Christian fundamentalist", adding that his political opinions leaned "to the right".

The head of the populist right-wing Progress Party (FrP), Norway's second-biggest political party, confirmed Behring Breivik had been a member between 1999 and 2006 and for several years a leader in its youth movement.

He stopped paying his subscription before ending his membership, according to the party.

Anti-fascist monitors meanwhile said Behring Breivik was also a member of a Swedish neo-Nazi Internet forum named Nordisk.

The attacks on Friday afternoon were western Europe's deadliest since the 2004 Madrid bombings, carried out by al-Qaeda.

Friday's attacks began with a car bomb which seared through landmark buildings including Stoltenberg's office and the finance ministry. It is thought that the car-bomber then caught a ferry to nearby Utoeya island wearing a police sweater.