Ten years after Breivik attacks, survivors seek to confront far-right extremism

Nearly 10 years after Anders Behring Breivik tried to kill her on the Norwegian island of Utoeya, Astrid Hoem is back there to explain to a group of teenagers how she ran for her life and hid in a beach cove while Breivik murdered others around her.

“He shot a girl next to me, in the back. She told me: ‘please tell my parents I love them because I am going to die’,” Hoem, 26, tells the high school students. The girl survived.

The students, who are on a three-day workshop on how to solve conflicts and challenge racist attitudes, listen in silence as Hoem recalls her memories: how she did not move for about two hours from under a rock, how she did not call friends in fear the ring would give their positions away to Breivik, how she thought Norway was at war.

Breivik detonated a car bomb outside the prime minister’s office in Oslo, killing eight, before driving to Utoeya and shooting 69 people gathered at a Labour Party youth camp on July 22, 2011.

via Reuters