Oslo: Funerals took place across Norway
on Friday for 32 more victims of the attacks two weeks before that
left 77 dead in the country's worst bloodshed since World War
II.
Almost half of those laid to rest were under the age
of 18, evidence of the horror of the July 22 bombing and
shooting attacks carried out by right-wing extremist Anders
Behring Breivik in Oslo and on nearby Utoeya island.
They included Sharidyn Svebakk-Bohn, or Sissi, who
died just days after her 14th birthday, and Johannes Buoe, a
boy of the same age.
Funerals have been held almost daily in the past week,
attended by government officials whenever the families
requested it.
Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was at the ceremony
for 45-year-old Monica Elisabeth Boesei, nicknamed "Mother
Utoeya" because for the past 20 years she had organised the
Labour Party youth camp attacked by Behring Breivik.
"Monica is dead, the roses are crying," party leader
Stoltenberg, almost weeping, said, before bowing his head in
respect in front of her flower-covered white coffin.
"I can't stop seeing their young faces," former prime
minister Gro Harlem Brundtland said through tears at Marianne
Sandvik's funeral on yesterday.
The 16-year-old was shot dead as she tried to swim to
safety.
Brundtland, an iconic figure of Norwegian Labour, had
addressed the young people gathered on Utoeya only hours
before the shooting.
PTI
First Published: Saturday, August 06, 2011, 00:07