norway attaks

Several people have been injured in a large explosion which has damaged government buildings in central Oslo, including the office of the Norwegian prime minster.

A Reuters correspondent said he counted at least eight injured people after the unexplained blast.
The tangled wreckage of a car was outside one building but the cause of the blast was unknown with police and fire officials refusing to comment.
The explosion at around 3.30pm (2.30pm BST) blew out most windows on the 17-storey building housing prime minister Jens Stoltenberg's office, as well as nearby ministries including the oil ministry, which was on fire. Norwegian news agency NTB said the prime minister is safe. Newspaper offices in the area were also reportedly damaged.
The city centre - which usually empties in July as Norwegians take holidays - is currently closed off with all public transport to and from the centre suspended.
It has been known for some time that al-Qaida core and other related "franchises" - including in the most active in Yemen – have been attempting to develop operations. Which leads to a second question: why Norway?...
The answer to that is three fold. In then first instance, with the increased levels of security and surveillance in the UK and the US as well as other European capitals, Norway might have been seen as a softer target despite the recent breaking up of an al-Qaida cell in Norway.

A more detailed explanation of the problems that Norway has had with Al Qaeda were supplied a year ago by the Atlantic magazine in an article by Thomas Hegghammer, a senior fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment in Oslo, and Dominic Tierney.

That piece followed the arrest of three men in Norway and Germany for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack involving peroxide explosives. All of those arrested were were Muslim immigrants to Norway.
The first explanation," wrote Hegghammer and Tierney, "is Afghanistan. Norway has been part of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan from its foundation in late 2001.... In late 2007, for example, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaida's
second-in-command, said that the group had previously threatened Norway because it "participated in the war against the Muslims...
A second contributory factor for why Norway may have been eyed in the past for potential jihadi terrorist attack is the fact that in 2006, a Norwegian newspaper reprinted a series of Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad which prompted threats against the country. A third potential explanation is the recent decision last week by a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he's deported from the Nordic country. The indictment centered on statements that Mullah Krekar - the founder of the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam - made to various media, including American network NBC