Teenagers swam for their lives in Norway carnage

NESLANDET, Norway, (Reuters) – Norwegian teenagers  at a lakeside summer camp fled screaming in panic, many leaping  into the water to save themselves, when an attacker dressed as a  policeman began spraying them with gunfire.

Police said at least 10 of the youngsters, attending a camp  run by the governing Labour Party, were killed in yesterday’s  attack, shortly after a blast in the capital Oslo killed seven  people in Western Europe’s worst bombing since 2005.

“I just saw people jumping into the water, about 50 people  swimming towards the shore. People were crying, shaking, they  were terrified,” said Anita Lien, 42, who lives by Tyrifjord  lake, a few hundred metres (yards) from Utoeya island, northwest  of Oslo.

“They were so young, between 14 and 19 years old,” she said.

Utoeya is an island about 500 metres long, clad with pine  trees. Lien said the shooting sounded like automatic gunfire.

A camp guard, Simen Braenden Mortensen, said that the gunman  had tricked his way onto the island by posing as a policeman  driving a silver grey car.

“He gets out of the car and shows ID, says he’s sent there  to check security, that that is purely routine in connection  with the terror attack (in Oslo),” Mortensen told the daily  Verdens Gang.

“It all looks fine, and a boat is called and it carries him  over to Utoeya. A few minutes passed, then we heard shots,” he  said.

A teenaged boy who witnessed the attack from the mainland  told Britain’s Sky Television: “We heard people screaming, it  was horrible…Some were waving at us from the island.”

Police said they had found undetonated explosives on the  island. They said the gunman, whom they described as ethnic  Norwegian, may also have been involved in planting the bomb in  Oslo.

Early today, an ambulance left the lake area, with a  body lying on a stretcher inside. Cars with distraught relatives  were heading to a nearby hotel hoping to meet loved ones  evacuated from the island.

Police and dogs were still searching the island and lake  overnight from boats and helicopters, with ambulances on  standby. Searchlights slowly swept the water in the dark.

People living by the lake got into boats to try to evacuate  people from the water. “I used my boat to ferry a lot of people  from the island, I saw many wounded people,” said a local man  who said he lived in a white house by the lake.