Norway massacre suspect wanted to hit royal palace: Police

The self-confessed Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik told police he had several targets in mind when quizzed after the attacks that killed 77 people, a police prosecutor said today.

Norwegian media reported that the right-wing extremist, who admitted to the July 22 shooting on an island summer camp and a car-bomb blast in Oslo earlier the same day, also wanted to hit the royal palace and the ruling party headquarters.

"During his interrogations he said in general terms that he was interested in other targets," prosecutor Paal-Fredrik Hjort Kraby told a press briefing.

"They were targets which would seem natural for a terrorist," he said, declining to give details.

According to the Verdens Gang tabloid, the royal palace was a target because of its symbolic value.

The Labour party headquarters were targeted, the paper said, because of the party's role in creating the multi-cultural society so loathed by Behring Breivik.

The tabloid, which did not reveal its source, also said investigators believed Behring Breivik had trouble making explosives beyond those that killed eight people in the Oslo blast, which targeted government offices.

Another 69 people, mainly young, were killed in the shooting spree at a Labour Party summer camp on the island of Utoeya.

Breivik, 32, believed he was engaged in a struggle to defend Europe against an Islamic invasion and despised anyone who believed in democracy, his lawyer, Geir Lippestad, has previously told the media.