Oslo lives with dismay and the horror of the survivors the hours after the attack on Friday night left two dead and 21 injured in the center of the Norwegian capitalwhich has received signs of mourning from dozens of people in the face of what they describe as a “hate crime” against the LGTBI + collective.
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Jan Arild, a survivor of the attack, explains in statements to EFE that he was sitting on the terrace of the London pub when he heard the sounds of the bullet and immediately saw that “it was no joke”, so he threw himself on the ground and tried to take refuge in the inside the premises.
When he got up after the shooting stopped, after several minutes of chaos and terror, he saw bodies scattered on the ground, added the witness, a musician in the band that played last night at the London pub, a reference venue for the LGTBI + community in
Oslo inside and outside of which the attacker opened fire.
Terrorist attack?
The Norwegian intelligence services (PST) consider the shooting as an act of “extremist Islamist terrorism”perpetrated in the final stretch of the LGTBI + Pride festivities, which is also attended by many national and foreign tourists.
This is the case of Fredrik Wiklund, a Swedish visitor who heard the shots from his hotel room, near the area of the attack, and who had traveled to Oslo expressly to celebrate Pride.
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“I think the attack shows people who are not LGTBI+ why it is important that we continue to have the Pride party and its demands, it makes us stronger” in the face of this “hate crime,” he told EFE.
With tears, flowers, candles and symbols of the LGTBI + collective, dozens of people have gathered to pay tribute to the victims outside the London Pub, cordoned off by a police seal.
The attack has been committed in a city full of rainbow flags -in institutional buildings, on clothing, painted on the faces of passers-by- and satisfied to host a large and colorful LGTBI + Pride party, as hours before the attack proclaimed its mayor, Marianne Borgen, at a reception for participants in the Global Fact 9 verification summit.
The attacker, who was arrested near the scene of the shooting, is a 42-year-old citizen of Norwegian nationality of Iranian origin.whom the PST had under its radar since 2015 due to the danger of radicalization, revealed the acting director of the PST, Roger Berg, at a press conference.
Cancellation of events
Raymond Johansen, mayor of the Oslo Governorate, an institutional figure below the Mayor’s Office, told EFE that Oslo is an “open” city and, given the possible “Islamophobia” that the attack may generate, he emphasized that the “attacker or attackers They are the only ones responsible.”
On the recommendation of the authorities, the Oslo Pride organization has suspended all the acts that were to be held today in the Norwegian capital and the terrorist alert level has been raised from three to five (the maximum) due to the danger that the acts may inspire to other people.
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