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Horror of Norway massacre detailed

Exactly 100 people were shot, some of them up to eight times, before the gunman surrendered to police. Of the 69 people killed, 56 were shot in the head. One drowned and another fell off a cliff in desperate attempts to flee the mayhem.

OSLO, Norway — Exactly 100 people were shot, some of them up to eight times, before the gunman surrendered to police. Of the 69 people killed, 56 were shot in the head. One drowned and another fell off a cliff in desperate attempts to flee the mayhem.

The indictment unveiled Wednesday against confessed killer and rightist extremist Anders Behring Breivik describes the horror unleashed on a political youth camp on July 22 with gruesome detail.

“Panic and mortal fear in children, youth and adults arose during the shooting, further intensified by the fact that there were limited possibilities of escape or hiding,” prosecutors said in a 19-page document charging Breivik with terrorism and premeditated murder.

Breivik, 33, has confessed to the shooting massacre on Utoya island and a bombing that killed eight people in Oslo on the same day, but denies criminal guilt. In pretrial hearings, he has portrayed the victims as “traitors” for embracing immigration policies he claims will result in an Islamic colonization of Norway.

The case is unique in this small, peaceful nation, previously spared mass killings and terror attacks, and stands out also in an international context for the number of shooting victims.

Breivik has been diagnosed as psychotic, and prosecutors said they would seek a sentence of compulsory psychiatric care instead of imprisonment, unless new information about his mental health emerges during the trial set to start on April 16.