Death toll in Norway attacks cut from 93 to 76

Norway police on Monday lowered the combined death toll from the bombing in downtown Oslo and shooting attack on nearby Utoya island from 93 to 76 people killed.

Police official Oeystein Maeland said the number of people killed in the bombing went up by one to eight, while the count from the mass shooting fell from 86 to 68.

(More from GlobalPost: Is Anders Behring Breivik part of a movement? and Norway's Christian terrorist leads to soul-searching)

Police cited confusion in the wake of the shooting as the reason for the significant death toll revision. Some bodies were double counted, they said.

"On Friday afternoon the situation was very chaotic," Maeland told a news conference in Oslo. "The police had to put the accent on helping the wounded and providing emergency care, it's possible that victims were counted several times."

He explained that bodies were difficult to count because they were spread all over the island, the Associated Press reports.

However, Maeland said the death toll from the shooting at the ruling Labor Party youth camp on Utoya island could still go up because the search for bodies is continuing.

In addition to those killed, at least 96 people were injured in the attacks. Police have declined to release a number for those people thought to still be missing.

The 32-year old suspect in the twin attacks, Anders Behring Breivik, made his first court appearance Monday at a closed hearing in Oslo. He has confessed to both attacks, but denied he had committed any crime.

The judge in the case said that Behring Breivik had mentioned "two other cells” during his first court appearance earlier on Monday.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg led Norway in a minute of silence for the victims of the attacks, the deadliest in Norway since World War II, the AP says.