Thieves escape with Munch masterpieces

ARMED men stormed into an art museum yesterday, threatened staff at gunpoint and stole Edvard Munch's famous paintings The Scream and Madonna before the eyes of stunned museum-goers.

The thieves yanked the paintings off the walls of Oslo's Munch museum and loaded them into a waiting car outside, said a witness, French radio producer Francois Castang.

Police spokeswoman Hilde Walsoe said the two or three armed men threatened a museum employee with a handgun to give them the two paintings, including The Scream - Munch's famed depiction of an anguished figure with its head in its hands.