Confessed killer planned 3 Oslo bombs

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OSLO, Norway, April 19 (UPI) -- A Norwegian man who confessed to killing 77 people in July said Thursday he originally planned to deploy bombs against three separate targets in Oslo.

Anders Behring Breivik told a courtroom in Oslo he planned to set car bombs at the main government building, the Norwegian Royal Castle and Labor party headquarters, but only attacked the first because he could not produce enough explosives, the Christian Science Monitor reported. He said he did not want to risk killing too many "innocents," by targeting three buildings.

Breivik said he had considered targeting media outlets, including NRK headquarters, newspaper Aftenposten and journalist conference SKUP.

"Norwegian press bears the largest part of the responsibility, maybe even more so than the Labor party, for the situation we are in now," Breivik said.

Breivik said he spent an average of 16 hours a day in 2006 playing a game called World of Warcraft and had dreamed "all my life" about taking a year off to play video games, the Financial Times reported.

By that time, he said he had decided to carry out a "suicide action" and that the "sabbatical year" playing games was his "martyrdom gift" to himself.

He said he used the game "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" to practice fighting his way out of government buildings.

CNN analyst John D. Sutter wrote Thursday Breivik's testimony provided "frightening evidence" for more stringent regulation of the video-game industry, while gamers and others who write about the industry "collectively muttered 'here we go again.'"

"How many times are we going to do this?" columnist Paul Tassi wrote in Forbes. "Really now, it's getting absurd."

Breivik has confessed to setting off a car bomb outside government headquarters July 22 and then opening fire at a Labor Party youth camp outside the capital.

When prosecutor Inga Bejer Engh asked Breivik if he wanted to be executed, the defendant said he does not "but I would have respected that decision."

"I will not acknowledge 21 years in prison, it's a ridiculous sentence," he said.

Breivik said he had not expected to survive the July 22 rampage, The Norway Post reported.