Norway: 3 killed in bus hijacking

A knife-wielding man on Monday hijacked a bus in western Norway and killed three people on board, including the bus driver, police said.

The suspect, described as a man in his 50s, was arrested after the attack in Sogn og Fjordane county, local police said.

A witness who was the first to arrive at the scene said he initially believed there had been an accident and rushed to help people inside the vehicle.

"The bus was on the side of the road, so we stopped our car and ran over," the witness told TV2 Nyhetskanalen, which identified himself only by his first name Leif.

He said he and another person tried to open the doors, but in vain.

"It was impossible to open the doors. Then we saw a dark-skinned person inside the bus. At first, we thought he was trying to get out but then saw he was moving around with a knife, and we realized that the situation was quite different," he said.

Authorities first got reports of injuries in connection with a bus accident and rescuers from the fire department were the first to arrive on the scene, police spokesman Odd Arne Solvag said. He said the rescuers apprehended the suspect, who was later arrested by police.

Solvag said the suspect was not an ethnic Norwegian but could not give details on where he was from.

The motive was not immediately clear.

Oslo police was getting ready to send an anti-terror unit to the scene aboard army helicopters but called off the deployment after receiving reports that the suspect had been arrested.

"The situation was very unclear. They only told us that there was one man on the bus who had hijacked the bus and the driver was hurt. That was the first message we got here," Oslo police spokesman Andre Krakenes said.

Multiple killings are rare in Norway, though the country was shocked by its worst peacetime massacre two years ago when a right-wing extremist killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage.

In 2003, on the same route between Valdres and Oslo, an Ethiopian killed the driver of a bus after murdering an asylum seeker in a local shelter.

Wire services