Kiwi's tale of Norway bomb horror

Cameron Leslie saw bloodied people running through the streets of Oslo after the car bomb went off. Photo / Supplied

Stumbling out on to the street just moments after a car bomb tore through central Oslo, Cameron Leslie saw bloodied people rushing in all directions.

The 31-year-old Auckland sales rep had been exercising in a gym 50m from where the bomb struck.

At first he thought it might have been an earthquake - but the heavy stench of sulphur told a different story.

It smelt a bit like fireworks or gunpowder and, as he looked around, he realised he was standing by a shop with the windows blown in.

"My first thought was it was an accident, like a truck had driven into the store next to us."

Then he noticed that windows on the sixth storey of many buildings were smashed, and he thought a plane may have crashed.

He stood in the middle of the road to avoid falling glass. It was a chaotic scene. Some people were running away from the blast; others ran towards it. Many more simply stood around wondering what to do. Nobody could find out what had happened.

"There were people running around who had mild wounds and a few people bleeding," he said. "It was a little bit difficult to know what to do."

Leslie was among nearly a dozen Kiwis caught up in one of the deadliest attacks on European soil in the past 50 years.

Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik reportedly set off the bomb blast, killing seven people, before shooting dead dozens moreon a nearby island.

Former Cantabrian Myfanwy Moore-Evensen, 37, felt the blast in her office, a 10-minute walk from the bomb site.

Her building shook with a loud thunderous rumble.

"I walked home and saw all the people wandering around going, 'What the hell has happened?'."

Broken glass was everywhere.

Sailboat rigger Aaron King lives 3km from the site of the bomb explosion. The 34-year-old, from near Geraldine in South Canterbury, said the noise could be heard throughout Oslo.

"It sounded like a direct burst of thunder. It was seriously loud and quite sharp. The weather forecast was for lightning and thunder and I thought it was thunder."

The shockwaves from the blast and the shootings are being felt in New Zealand, too. Norwegian students will today gather at an Auckland bar to support each other.

Kirsti Isdal, 26, arrived in New Zealand in January. Like many of Breivik's victims, Isdal was once a member of the Labour Party's youth movement, though she says she never attended any camps like those where the massacre took place.

Labour MP Jacinda Ardern was last night anxiously awaiting news from friends caught up in the shootings.

- additional reporting Andre Hueber, John Weekes and Edward Rooney