Oslo – Norway marked the 4th Anniversary on Wednesday of the deadly attack by right-wing extremist Anders Breivik by commemorating the victims of his mass murder.
“You are not forgotten, we remember you with love,’’ Prime Minister Erna Solberg said in Oslo, where the commemoration that included a minute’s silence took place.
Government buildings in the capital still bore the marks of the explosions that Breivik – a far-right enthusiast and self-styled opponent of Norway’s multiculturalism, set off on July 22, 2011.
He later went on to murder 77 people, many of them children and young people, who were attending a youth camp organised by the Labour Party on the island of Utoya.
He shot people lying injured on the ground and those trying to flee through the water.
However he received a sentence of 21 years in prison for the murders.
“The day would always be “a dark day in Norwegian history,’’ Solberg said.
The newspaper Aftenposten reported that many of the relatives were still unable to return to work four years after the terrorist attack.
“Four years is a long time for those at whose house there is an empty chair at meal times every day, who miss someone on holidays and also on normal days,’’ Mani Hussaini, leader of the Labour Party’s youth organisation AUF, said.
Later in the afternoon, the families gathered to remember their loved ones on the island of Utoya.
Earlier in the day, there had been a church service in Oslo attended by royalty and NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, who was Prime Minister at the time of the attack. (dpa/NAN)