SARAJEVO, Nov 9: Families of some 8,000 Muslims killed by Serb forces in 1995 in the former UN “safe area” of Srebrenica will sue the United Nations and the Dutch government if they refuse to compensate them, their lawyer said on Sunday.

The families will file a lawsuit — which took two years to complete and is similar to that of Holocaust survivors — by the end of February if they fail to reach an out-of-court deal worth at least one billion Bosnian marka ($587 million), lawyer Semir Guzin said.

“The survivors, their children, need to continue living and they need money,” said Guzin, a Bosnian lawyer from a team which also includes U.S. and Dutch legal representatives.

“We still hope this can be sorted without a court action but in case we cannot reach out-of-court settlement we have prepared a lawsuit on the behalf of about 8,000 plaintiffs,” Guzin said by telephone from the southern town of Mostar.

The lawyers demanded compensation from the world body and the Dutch government a year ago but received no reply so far. Lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers helplessly stood by in July 1995 as rampaging Serbs forces rounded up Muslims before they were summarily executed in Europe’s worst massacre since World War Two.

“There is a parallel with the Holocaust and Srebrenica victims should be compensated like Holocaust victims were compensated,” Guzin said, referring to billions of dollars designated for hundreds of thousands of family members and Holocaust survivors.—Reuters