Anders Behring Breivik trial: Killer describes Utoya massacre in detail

Survivors of the 22 July killings hugged each other and sobbed during his testimony in the city’s district court, which was broadcast to 17 other courtrooms where the relatives of the victims gathered.

Breivik went into detail as he explained how he shot panicked youngsters at point-blank range.

Sixty-nine people, mostly teenagers at an annual summer camp, were killed on Utoya island last summer.

Breivik admits carrying out 77 killings in total, but denies criminal charges, claiming his victims had betrayed Norway by embracing multi-culturalism. The 33-year-old said: “Some of them are completely paralysed. They cannot run. They stand totally still. This is something they never show on TV. It was very strange.”

Breivik has admitted to setting off a bomb in Oslo, killing eight people, before opening fire on the governing Labour Party’s annual youth camp on Utoya island.

Looking tense but focused, Breivik spoke calmly about the shooting rampage, starting from the moment he took a small ferry to Utoya, an island in a lake outside Oslo.

He was disguised as a policeman, carrying a rifle and a handgun. He also brought drinking water because he knew he would get a dry throat from the stress.

Breivik’s first two victims were Monica Boesei, one of the organisers of the camp, and off-duty police officer Trond Berntsen, who was on Utoya as a security guard.

“My whole body tried to revolt when I took the weapon in my hand. There were 100 voices in my head saying, ‘Don’t do it, don’t do it’,” Breivik said.

But he did – pointing his gun at Mr Berntsen’s head and pulling the trigger.

He shot Ms Boesei as she tried run away. Then, as they lay on the ground, he shot them both twice in the head.

Breivik said he could not remember large chunks of the time he spent on the island before surrendering to police commandos. Still, he recalled some of the shootings in great detail, including inside a cafe building were he shot his young victims as they pleaded for their lives.

Earlier, Breivik had revealed how he took to the internet to learn how to carry out a bombing-and-shooting rampage, studying attacks by al-Qaeda, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centre.

Yesterday, the fifth day of his trial, the confessed mass killer told a Norwegian court he paid close attention in particular to the World Trade Centre bombing in New York and McVeigh’s 1995 attack on an Oklahoma City government building, which killed 168 people and injured more than 600.

Breivik also said he had read more than 600 bomb-making guides.

He called al-Qaeda “the most successful revolutionary movement in the world” and said it should serve as an inspiration to far-right militants, even though their goals are different.

Breivik said of al-Qaeda: “I have studied each one of their actions, what they have done wrong, what they have done right. We want to create a European version of al-Qaeda.”

His matter-of-fact descriptions deeply disturbed families of the victims, most of whom were teenagers.

Christin Bjelland, a spokeswoman for a massacre support group, said outside court: “I’m going back to my hometown tonight and I live by the sea, so I have arranged with my husband, he’s going to drive me out to the sea, and I’m going to take a walk there and I’m going to scream my head off.”