US suspects ISI behind Kabul Embassy attack: report

Washington: US suspects that Pakistan's powerful spy agency ISI could be behind the attack on its Embassy in Kabul this week and is looking for direct evidence in this regard.

A senior US defence official said that given the ISI's history of supporting and sheltering the Haqqanis, it was "almost reflexive" to see if the spy agency had any role in the latest Kabul violence that left 27 people dead.

"The possibility of ISI involvement was already being considered within hours of the attack's conclusion when President Barack Obama's National Security Council met Wednesday, said a US official," The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday.

The American suspicions are being partly fuelled by growing concerns that deteriorating bilateral relations, and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, may be pushing elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency to more closely embrace the Haqqani network, the Taliban faction blamed for this week's violence and a spate of attacks in and around Kabul.

Neither the ISI nor the Pakistani military, of which the spy agency is part, immediately responded to the US suspicions, the WSJ said, adding that Pakistani government officials dismissed the suspicions as insulting and unfair.

Top US officials, including Defence Secretary Leon Panetta, have already blamed the violence in Kabul on the Haqqani network, an Afghan insurgent faction whose history is intertwined with the ISI. The Pakistani spy agency has aided Haqqani network attacks in Kabul in past years, officials say.

The US has warned the Pakistanis of stronger action if the group wasn't reined in.

Afghan officials say mobile phones found on the slain attackers in this week's commando-style raid in Kabul indicate they were in contact with people from "outside Afghanistan" a typical Afghan way of indirectly pointing to Pakistan.

Even so, US and Afghan officials have stopped short of publicly linking the attack to the ISI, as they did after past attacks in Kabul, such as the 2008 and 2009 bombings of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

In those and other cases, US officials said that communications intercepts and other intelligence directly linked the ISI to the attacks. Yet it took months to reach that conclusion and publicise it.

What is different this time is the speed with which some US officials publicly said they were exploring ISI links, a sign of the growing frustration of US officials who in recent months have become more public in their finger-pointing at Pakistan for its coordination with Islamist militant groups.

According to the daily, a senior US defence official said there is currently no "actionable intelligence" linking Pakistan's spy service to this week's attack.

"But we're looking for it closely," the defence official said shortly after the violence ended," the official was quoted as saying.

"That illustrates the deep vein of mistrust now running through the relationship between Washington and Islamabad," the officials said.

"The level of patience has just gone out the window," Seth Jones, a political scientist at the Rand Corp, who has spent much of the past two years working with the US military in Afghanistan, was quoted as saying.

"People aren't keeping it inside anymore and containing it in a circle that, for a while, was just private," he said.

"US officials say they are looking for evidence that directly links elements of Pakistan's powerful spy agency to this week's assault on the US Embassy and coalition headquarters in Kabul, a sign of just how rancorous relations have become between the two allies in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban," the daily said.

A direct attack on an American embassy "isn't something we can treat as business-as-usual," said the US defense official.

Even if no ISI link is found, the Pakistani relationship with the Haqqanis is "long past unacceptable," the official said.

"Missteps by both the US and Pakistan this year have led to a sharp deterioration in relations, which may also be prompting Islamabad to more closely embrace militant groups from which it has sought to publicly distance itself in recent years, according to US officials and Mr Jones of Rand," the daily said.

Norway horror: 80 die in camp shooting, 7 in blast

Oslo: A homegrown terrorist set off a deadly explosion in downtown Oslo before heading to a summer camp dressed as a police officer to commit one of the deadliest shooting sprees in history, killing at least 80 people as terrified youths ran and even swam for their lives, police said on Friday.

Police initially said about 10 were killed at the forested camp on the island of Utoya, but some survivors said they thought the toll was much higher. Police director Oystein Maeland told reporters early Saturday they had discovered many more victims.

"It's taken time to search the area. What we know now is that we can say that there are at least 80 killed at Utoya," Maeland said. "It goes without saying that this gives dimensions to this incident that are exceptional."

A suspect in the shootings, and the Oslo explosion that killed seven people, was arrested. Though police did not release his name, Norwegian national broadcaster NRK identified him as 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik and said police searched his Oslo apartment overnight. NRK and other Norwegian media posted pictures of the blond, blue-eyed Norwegian.

A police official said the suspect appears to have acted alone in both attacks, and that "it seems like that this is not linked to any international terrorist organisations at all”. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because that information had not been officially released by Norway's police.

"It seems it's not Islamic-terror related," the official said. "This seems like a madman's work."

The official said the attack "is probably more Norway's Oklahoma City than it is Norway's World Trade Centre." Domestic terrorists carried out the 1995 attack on a federal building in Oklahoma City, while foreign terrorists were responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The official added, however, "it's still just hours since the incident happened. And the investigation is going on with all available resources."

The attacks formed the deadliest day of terror in Western Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings, when shrapnel-filled bombs exploded, killing 191 people and wounding about 1,800.

The motive was unknown, but both attacks were in areas connected to the ruling Labor Party government. The youth camp, about 20 miles (35 kilometres) northwest of Oslo, is organised by the party's youth wing, and the Prime Minister had been scheduled to speak there on Saturday.

A 15-year-old camper named Elise said she heard gunshots, but then saw a police officer and thought she was safe. Then he started shooting people right before her eyes.

"I saw many dead people," said Elise, whose father, Vidar Myhre, didn't want her to disclose her last name. "He first shot people on the island. Afterward he started shooting people in the water."

Elise said she hid behind the same rock that the killer was standing on. "I could hear his breathing from the top of the rock," she said.

She said it was impossible to say how many minutes passed while she was waiting for him to stop.

At a hotel in the village of Sundvollen, where survivors of the shooting were taken, 21-year-old Dana Berzingi wore pants stained with blood. He said the fake police officer ordered people to come closer, then pulled weapons and ammunition from a bag and started shooting.

Several victims "had pretended as if they were dead to survive," Berzingi said. But after shooting the victims with one gun, the gunman shot them again in the head with a shotgun, he said.

"I lost several friends," said Berzingi, who used the cell phone of one of those friends to call police.

The blast in Oslo, Norway's capital and the city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded, left a square covered in twisted metal, shattered glass and documents expelled from surrounding buildings. Most of the windows in the 20-floor high-rise where Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his administration work were shattered. Other buildings damaged house government offices and the headquarters of some of Norway's leading newspapers.

The dust-fogged scene after the blast reminded one visitor from New York of September 11.

Ian Dutton, who was in a nearby hotel, said people "just covered in rubble" were walking through "a fog of debris”.

"It wasn't any sort of a panic," he said, "It was really just people in disbelief and shock, especially in a such as safe and open country as Norway. You don't even think something like that is possible."

Police said the Oslo explosion was caused by "one or more" bombs.

The police official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Oslo bombing occurred at 3:26 pm local time (1:26 pm GMT), and the camp shootings began one to two hours later. The official said the gunman used both automatic weapons and handguns, and that there was at least one unexploded device at the youth camp that a police bomb disposal team and military experts were working on disarming.

The suspect had only a minor criminal record, the official said.

National police chief Sveinung Sponheim said seven people were killed by the blast in downtown Oslo, four of whom have been identified, and that nine or 10 people were seriously injured.

Sponheim said a man was arrested in the shooting, and the suspect had been observed in Oslo before the explosion there.

Sponheim said the camp shooter "wore a sweater with a police sign on it. I can confirm that he wasn't a police employee and never has been."

Aerial images broadcast by Norway's TV2 showed members of a SWAT team dressed in black arriving at the island in boats and running up the dock. Behind them, people who stripped down to their underwear swam away from the island toward shore, some using flotation devices.

Sponheim said police were still trying to get an overview of the camp shooting and could not say whether there was more than one shooter. He would not give any details about the identity or nationality of the suspect, who was being interrogated by police.

Oslo University Hospital said 12 people were admitted for treatment following the Utoya shooting, and 11 people were taken there from the explosion in Oslo. The hospital asked people to donate blood.

Stoltenberg, who was home when the blast occurred and was not harmed, visited injured people at the hospital late Friday. Earlier he decried what he called "a cowardly attack on young innocent civilians”.

"I have message to those who attacked us," he said. "It's a message from all of Norway: You will not destroy our democracy and our commitment to a better world."

NRK showed video in Oslo of a blackened car lying on its side amid the debris. A reporter who was in the office of Norwegian news agency NTB said the building shook from the blast and all employees were evacuated. Down in the street, he saw one person with a bleeding leg being led away from the area.

A reporter headed to Utoya was turned away by police before reaching the lake that surrounds the island, as eight ambulances with sirens blaring entered the area. Police blocked off roads leading to the lake.

The United States, European Union, NATO and the UK, all quickly condemned the bombing, which Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague called "horrific" and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen deemed a "heinous act”.

"It's a reminder that the entire international community has a stake in preventing this kind of terror from occurring," President Barack Obama said.

Obama extended his condolences to Norway's people and offered US assistance with the investigation. He said he remembered how warmly Norwegians treated him in Oslo when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.

Nobel Peace Prize Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland said it appeared the camp attack "was intended to hurt young citizens who actively engage in our democratic and political society. But we must not be intimidated. We need to work for freedom and democracy every day."

A US counterterrorism official said the United States knew of no links to terrorist groups and early indications were the attack was domestic. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was being handled by Norway.

At least two Islamic extremist groups had tried to take credit for the attacks. Many intelligence analysts said they had never heard of Helpers of Global Jihad, which took initial credit. The Kurdish group Ansar al-Islam also took credit on some jihadist web sites.

Norway has been grappling with a homegrown terror plot linked to al Qaeda. Two suspects are in jail awaiting charges.

Last week, a Norwegian prosecutor filed terror charges against an Iraqi-born cleric for threatening Norwegian politicians with death if he is deported from the Scandinavian country. The indictment centred on statements that Mullah Krekar — the founder of Ansar al-Islam — made to various news media, including American network NBC.

Terrorism has also been a concern in neighbouring Denmark since an uproar over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad six years ago.