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oslohotos and television footage showed windows blown out in the 17-story office building across the street from the oil ministry, and the street and plaza areas on each side were strewn with glass and debris. Norwegian police did not immediately return messages requesting comment. The cause of the explosions was not immediately clear, but a Reuters reporter described seeing the mangled wreckage of a car near one of the buildings. The explosions ripped through the modern cluster of government buildings around the Einar Gerhardsens plaza at a time when many Norwegians were on vacation and many more had left their offices early for the weekend. At the bomb site, police evacuated and roped off the area around the buildings as tension mixed with shaken fascination. Many residents milled around the area


, some snapping photos of the destruction. Store windows were blown out for several blocks around the plaza. While Norway has seen little political violence in recent years, the country has a small fighting contingent in Afghanistan and was one of several countries cited by Ayman al-Zawahri, the Al Qaeda leader, as potential targets for attack. In 2006, Norwegian newspapers reprinted Danish cartoons that angered Muslims by lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. A Norwegian security analyst, who asked not to be named, the country has historically seen a low risk from terrorism but cautioned that the nature of the explosion was still not know. Three Norwegian men were arrested in July 2010 on suspicion of terrorism and were said to be a terrorist “node” in a larger global network, American counterterrorism officials said at the time.

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