By Gwladys Fouche and Nora Buli<\/p>\n
OSLO, March 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. embassy in Oslo was hit by a loud explosion early on Sunday, causing minor \u200cdamage but no injuries in what may have been a deliberate attack \u200clinked to the crisis in the Middle East, Norwegian police said.<\/p>\n
“It’s natural to see this in the context \u200bof the current security situation and that this could be an attack deliberately targeting the U.S. embassy,” Frode Larsen, head of the Oslo police investigation unit told a news conference.<\/p>\n
No suspects have been identified at present but police are searching for one or several perpetrators \u200cand are cooperating closely with \u2060the embassy, Larsen said.<\/p>\n
“One of our hypotheses is that this is terrorism, but we are also exploring other options,” Larsen later told public \u2060broadcaster NRK.<\/p>\n
The blast at the embassy compound in western Oslo occurred at 1 a.m. (0000 GMT), sending thick smoke into the street by the entrance of the consular section, eyewitnesses said.<\/p>\n
“We are \u200baware of \u200ban incident at the U.S. Embassy in \u200bOslo, Norway and are investigating,” a \u200cState Department spokesperson said, and thanked the Norwegian authorities for supporting the investigation.<\/p>\n
The department had nothing further to share at this time, the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n
Norway’s government was in contact with officials at the U.S. embassy to convey that this was “an unacceptable act that we take very seriously”, Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“The security of \u200cdiplomatic missions is very important to us,” he \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
SMOKE AND DAMAGE<\/p>\n
The blast occurred at the entry to \u200bthe consular section, Oslo police said, \u200band witnesses said the entrance had been damaged.<\/p>\n
“There was a very \u200cthick layer of smoke on the street,” \u200bsaid Sebastian Toerstad, 18, \u200ba high school student who drove past the embassy at the time of the explosion.<\/p>\n
“There was some damage to the entrance,” Toerstad told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Police said no \u200bfurther explosive devices had been \u200cfound in the area.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche, Nora Buli and Terje Solsvik \u200bin OsloAdditional reporting by Sergio Non and Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by \u200bHelen Popper, Alexandra Hudson and Ros Russell)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gwladys Fouche and Nora Buli OSLO, March 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. embassy in Oslo was hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[85],"tags":[20796,20611,157,156,20500,21385],"class_list":["post-37232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oslo","tag-deliberate-attack","tag-frode-larsen","tag-norway","tag-oslo","tag-oslo-police","tag-state-department-spokesperson"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116207101291124588","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}