Country plans demolition of several buildings damaged in Breivik rampage.
Norway’s government said Sunday it would demolish several buildings to rebuild the government block, at an estimated cost of 15.5 billion Norwegian krone ($2.6 billion), following the 2011 mass killing by Anders Behring Breivik that claimed 77 lives, while keeping the building that was the main target of a bomb.
“We will change, but we must also preserve,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg at an Oslo press conference, underlining that she’d taken into account the significant opposition against tearing down the symbolically important H building.
For three years, the government block in the heart of Oslo has been empty, façades covered in white sheets, a ghostly reminder of the terrorist attack. Government employees are scattered in offices all over Oslo, at a rental cost of 400 million Norwegian krone a year, and will remain so until the new block is ready a decade from now.
On July 22, 2011, a Friday afternoon, Mr. Breivik, a political extremist with strong views on immigration, parked a Volkswagen Crafter with a fertilizer bomb outside the offices of the Prime Minister and the Ministry of Justice in the H block, as the street was still open for traffic. The building was heavily damaged by the blast, and eight people died. Later, Mr. Breivik went on to kill 69 people, mostly kids, at a summer camp on nearby Utøya.
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