A Norwegian court has ruled that mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik will not be released early from jail, denying a request by the man who killed 77 people in 2011.

Lawyer Oeystein Storrvik on Wednesday (local time) said Breivik would appeal the decision.

The court was not immediately available for comment.

In the Nordic country’s worst peacetime atrocity, the anti-Muslim neo-Nazi on July 22, 2011, killed eight people with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp on Utoeya island.

The court heard Breivik’s petition for parole, his second, in November. During that hearing, he said the attacks had been “necessary”.

The 45-year-old has served 13 years of a 21-year sentence, the maximum penalty at the time of his crimes. It can be extended for as long as he is deemed a threat to society.

He can apply for parole a year after each rejection.

-AAP