OSLO, July 19 (Reuters) - A 16-year-old Somali boy was in critical condition on Saturday after being shot by an unknown assailant with a large-calibre weapon at a centre for asylum seekers near Oslo, police said.

The Somali was hit in the stomach after a bullet pierced through the wall of the building on Friday in the town of Asker. He was due to undergo a second life-saving operation on Saturday, police said.

"We don't know who and we don't know why," Einar Aas, assistant police chief in the Asker og Baerum district, told Reuters when asked about the attack.

"We found the spot a few hundred metres from the centre where the shots were probably fired with some heavy gun."

Police are still hunting whoever was behind the attack. At least three bullets hit two buildings at the centre, which houses about 120 teenage asylum seekers.

"It might be some kind of radicalism. That is one of the possible explanations," Aas said.

Record numbers of asylum seekers have come to Norway this year, notably from Iraq, Eritrea, Russia, Serbia and Somalia. (Reporting by Wojciech Moskwa; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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