OSLO, July 25 (Reuters) - "Why didn't you come earlier?", survivors screamed when Norwegian police arrived after an hour in which Anders Behring Breivik had wandered the wooded island of Utoeya shooting dead 68 people, most of them teenagers.
In a nation united by grief over the worst massacre in its modern history, few except the survivors quoted by media have criticised authorities for not preventing the attacks or for the speed of their response once they had been carried out.
Already reeling from Breivik's bomb in Oslo, the police response to the island massacre was beset with problems -- from a boat so overloaded with officers it took on water, to special forces without a suitable helicopter to fly them there.
Meanwhile the minutes ticked by and Breivik hunted down his victims who hid under beds, climbed trees and hid in bushes or jumped into the lake in desperate attempts to flee.
It was 5.26 p.m. on Friday when local police in Nordre Buskerud first received an alert about shootings on the island. Four minutes later they notified Oslo and another eight minutes after that they formally requested back-up.
Fourteen minutes later still, local police arrived at the shore of the mainland, but for a further 17 minutes waited for a boat.
"We asked for help from the SWAT team in Oslo, which is specially trained to deal with armed situations. We did not know about the extent of the situation that was out there," North Buskerud police chief Sissel Hammer was quoted as saying by the Dagsavisen daily newspaper.
Oh and before I forget, just one citizen with HIS OWN gun could have settled the thing without fuss nor muss. Pathetic.
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