At least two people were killed and more than a dozen are injured after a shooting overnight Friday in an LGBTQ nightclub in the Norwegian capital Oslo, in what police have described as a suspected terrorist attack.
Shooting in Norway on eve of Pride parade investigated as possible terror attack
The shooting occurred on the eve of Oslo’s Pride parade, which had been due to take place on Saturday. The organizers said in a statement released on Facebook early Saturday that Pride events in the city had been canceled on police advice.
A spokeswoman for Oslo University Hospital told The Washington Post that the facility received seven patients, with one other person sent to a hospital outside the Norwegian capital. Eleven people who suffered minor injuries were sent to local emergency rooms, she said.
Law enforcement said they had taken a person into custody near the scene of the attack. In a news conference Saturday morning, police said the suspect was a Norwegian citizen who was known to police, although not for major crimes.
“I saw a man arrive at the site with a bag,” said Olav Ronneberg, a journalist for Norwegian public broadcaster NRK. “He picked up a weapon and started shooting.”
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store condemned the shooting, which he described as “a cruel and deeply shocking attack on innocent people.”
London Pub is located in the vicinity of the Storting, Norway’s legislature. It has hosted Pride-related celebrations for years and on Thursday held a drag show and a Pride-themed bingo session.
Norway has some of Europe’s more gay-friendly laws. Earlier this year, the prime minister marked the 50th anniversary of the country’s decriminalization of male same-sex relations by formally apologizing for its past treatment of the LGBTQ community.
“I apologize for the fact that the Norwegian authorities conveyed, through legislation, and also a range of other discriminatory practices, that gay love was not acceptable,” he said.
In July 2011, a Norwegian man killed 77 people by setting off a bomb outside the prime minister’s office in Oslo and opening fire at a youth summer camp organized by the left-leaning Labour Party, in one of the Nordic country’s most heinous crimes in recent memory. Norwegian lawmakers have since banned semiautomatic weapons such as the type of firearm used in the 2011 rampage.
Source: WP
