Norwegian police 'closing in' on Scream robbers

Norwegian police said yesterday they were closing in on gunmen who stole Edvard Munch's masterpiece The Scream from an Oslo museum almost two months ago.

Police said they had identified a group of people linked to the getaway car used in the bold daytime robbery of a version of one of the world's most famous paintings in late August, the first armed theft at a gallery in Norway.

"Police believe they identified some individuals and now have to figure out who did what where," Oslo police said in a statement. "It is like an enormous jigsaw puzzle."

Two masked robbers brandished a gun and cut wires attached to The Scream and Madonna, another Munch painting, and walked out of the museum's front door to a waiting car with art worth up to an estimated $90 million.

Police said they were in the last phase of technical investigation of the car, a black Audi. The car was found on the outskirts of Oslo hours after the theft of the 1893 paintings.

"The technical findings will be further analysed, and the results will probably give police further leads in finding the criminals," police said.

The thieves let off a fire extinguisher in the car, hoping the powder would erase fingerprints or DNA genetic evidence.

The Munch museum has been among Norway's most visited tourist attractions, largely because of The Scream, an icon of existential angst showing a waif-like figure against a blood-red sky.

The other main version of The Scream was stolen from Norway's National Gallery in 1994 when thieves broke a window and climbed in with a ladder on the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

The government refused to pay a ransom for The Scream in 1994 and police caught the thieves and recovered the picture several months later.