Breivik's mother 'in shock' over violence

Officials who have interviewed the mother of the self-confessed mass murderer Anders Breivik have broken their silence on her condition for the first time, saying she is deeply confused and that she has no intention of seeing her son again.

Sixty-four-year-old Wenche Behring was said to be receiving psychiatric treatment and to be in a state of total shock as a result of her son's slaughter of eight people in an Oslo bomb blast and massacre of 69 others in a cold-blooded shooting spree on Utoya island.

"She does not understand how her son could have done this," Oslo police spokesman Pal-Fredrik Kraby told Dagbladet newspaper in an interview.

Mrs Behring, a nurse who was divorced from Breivik's father Jens when Breivik was one year old, looked after her son after her marriage broke up. Breivik lived with her at her comfortable middle-class apartment in western Oslo until shortly before he carried out his attacks.

Police said Mrs Behring was given psychiatric help during questioning and was continuing to receive treatment. "For obvious reasons, she's not doing well," said Mr Kraby. He also revealed that she had expressed no wish to see her son, who is being held in solitary confinement.

Ms Behring was said not to have returned to the Oslo apartment she shared with Breivik.