Breivik: Survivor Clung To Cliff As Friend Died

An 18-year-old has told a Norwegian court how he clung to a cliff on the country's Utoya island for hours to avoid the bullets of gunman Anders Behring Breivik.

Marius Hoft, who was attending a Labour party youth camp on the island last July, watched his best friend fall down the cliff face to his death, he told Oslo district court.

"I started crying, but decided to wait with the tears until I was in safety. I decided to stay alive," he said.

To stay alive on a tiny shelf on the cliff he thought about his mother, and how nice it would be to see her again.

His best friend fell as they were hiding together, but Marius could do nothing but watch on as he died.

The teenager clung to the tiny island shelf for hours, watching others swim for their lives as the mass killer shot at people from just above his head.

Marius was the last one to be rescued from the island by police officers who used a rope to pull him to safety.

The court also heard from four other survivors of the attack on Utoya, where 69 of Breivik's 77 victims died.

Frida Holm Skoglund, 20, was shot in the back of her thigh. She managed to pull the bullet out and swim to safety.

"I could feel something in the back of my thigh and pulled out a bullet. It was all deformed," she said.

Frida was so nervous about appearing in court, face-to-face with the man who tried to kill her, that she used her right to ask Breivik be removed from the room before she entered.

She knew Breivik was watching from another room and sent him the following message with a little smile: "We won. He lost. Norwegian youth can swim."

Lars Gronnestad, also 20, smeared soil all over his face and body and hid under a tree after he was hit by Breivik's bullets.

He was seriously injured and anti-terror police inserted a tube between his ribs when they found him under the tree.

That police emergency surgery saved his life, as doctors later revealed that he would only have survived another 15 minutes untreated.

Breivik listened to the survivors without showing any emotions at all. He will meet another 46 survivors face-to-face over the coming days.

The 33-year-old has admitted responsibility for a bomb blast that killed eight people in Oslo in addition to the island deaths.

But he has pleaded not guilty to murder, claiming he acted in self-defence.

The trial will decide whether he receives a prison sentence or is declared legally insane and sent to a psychiatric facility.