By Agencies

A family member of one of Anders Behring Breivik's 69 victims in a shooting massacre on Norway's Utoeya island last July has thrown a shoe at him in court, screaming "You killer, go to Hell!".

The shoe hit Breivik's lawyer, Vibeke Hein Baera, and the incident, followed by applause, "bravos" and tears among onlookers in the courtroom on Friday, led to a temporary suspension of proceedings on the 17th day of the trial.

"Luckily, it was just a shoe," Hein Baera said after the incident.

The attacker, a man of Iraqi origin whose brother was killed in the July 22 attack, was quickly brought under control by security guards and escorted out of the courtroom as he continued to shout in English: "Go to Hell!"

The shoe attack was the first serious incident since the beginning of the 33-year-old's trial on April 16.

Breivik has been charged with committing terrorist acts over a bombing in Oslo that killed eight people and his subsequent killing spree on the island of Utoeya, where the ruling Labour Party's youth wing was hosting a summer camp.

Breivik has confessed to carrying out the killings but refused to plead guilty, insisting his massacres were "cruel but necessary" to stop the Labour Party's "multicultural experiment" and what he called the "Muslim invasion" of Norway and Europe.