GENEVA, Sept 22: Some 200 adults and children who lost relatives in the US bombing of Libya in 1986 demonstrated outside the United Nations’ European headquarters on Monday seeking compensation for their losses.

The demonstrators, clad in long white robes, said they represented hundreds of others in Libya who also had family members killed or maimed in the attacks on the country’s two main cities.

They said they were calling on the Libyan authorities to hold back any compensation to the families of victims of the bombing of a US airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland in 1988 until they were also compensated.

“We are here to draw the world’s attention to the crime that was committed by the United States during the night of April 15, 1986, when civilian zones in Tripoli and Benghazi were bombed,” a statement they distributed said.

“That action was against all international laws and principles, and caused the death, injury and maiming of children, old people and women, and the destruction of civilian homes and establishments,” the statement said.

The bombing was ordered by Republican President Ronald Reagan’s administration in retaliation for what he said was Libyan-sponsored terrorism against US personnel in Europe.

The attack occurred two years before the Lockerbie bombing, in which 270 people died. Last week the UN Security Council lifted sanctions against Libya, imposed for Lockerbie bombing, after it agreed to pay $2.7 billion to the families of the dead.

Libya is also still finalising a compensation deal with families of 170 people killed in a 1989 bombing of a French airliner over Niger.

It has accepted blame in both cases, although Libyan envoys deny there was direct official involvement in either.—Reuters