Youths tell of their flight from Anders Breivik's bullets

Five young men and women gave gripping descriptions  on Monday of their struggles to escape death at the hands of the Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik.

Some in the courtroom in Oslo were moved to tears by the evidence of Marius Hoft, 18, as he described having to jump over several bodies to get to the cliff face on Utoya island where he hid from the killer. "I started crying but decided to wait with the tears until I was safe," he said. "I wanted to survive, and thought about my mother."

Another witness, Frida Holm Skoglund, 20, was so affected by her ordeal that she asked Breivik to leave the court before she would speak. He viewed proceedings via a video link from an adjoining room.

Wearing a headband made of daisies, she described in a low voice how she had pulled a bullet from her leg before leaping into the water to swim 600 yards to the mainland. "I touched my thigh and felt something sharp there," she said. "I pulled it out and I saw, I felt the bullet. It was not until later that it hurt," she said.

She had run to the southern tip of the island, leapt into the water and swum. When she turned around, she saw that those who had hesitated had been shot dead.

Miss Skoglund made it to the mainland, despite an asthma attack and calls of come back here! from Breivik.

"It was very absurd. I didn't really understand what was going on but I would never have swum towards a person like that," she said.

Another victim, Lars Gronnestad, 20, recounted how he had hidden under trees, his lung punctured by a bullet, smearing soil on his face to prevent himself being seen.

"I remember thinking I can't just lie here, I need to get away, this is too open," he said of his decision to find cover. "While I was looking for somewhere to go I was thinking who this could be? A Right-wing extremist, Left-wing extremist, a coup d'etat, what it could be?"

Ane Kollen Evenmo, 17, revealed how she had mistaken Breivik for a policeman and waved at him, drawing attention to the boat on which she and a group of others had escaped, and attracting a hail of bullets.

The victims told Inga Bejer Engh, the prosecutor, of their difficulties coming to terms with what happened. "Things are going OK," said Mr Gronnestad. "I react somewhat to loud sounds but apart from that I have a full life."

Ms Skoglund said she still felt guilty about the deaths of members of the delegation she had led to the Labour Party youth camp on the island.

"I was chairman in my county and I lost the three youngest ones," she said.

But she ended with a message of defiance. "We won, he lost. Norwegian youths can swim!"

The witness statements are expected to take up much of the fourth week of Breivik's trial for the murder of 77 people in Oslo, and the nearby island of Utoya, last July.

Breivik, 33, admits the killings, but claims they were "necessary" to alert Norway to the threat he believes is posed by Islamic immigration into the country.

At the end of yesterday's session, Breivik complained to the judge that the psychiatrists who had assessed his sanity would have their statements broadcast on national television, while the testimony he read out on the first day of the trial was not.

"I find it completely unacceptable that my ideological explanation will not be broadcast, while the experts' testimony will be broadcast. This will be skewed and will made me look insane," he said.