handout police picture taken from the website of the German Federal Police, showing a picture of Uwe Boehnhardt
National Socialist Underground neo-Nazis Uwe Bohnhardt and Uwe Mundlos (Reuters)

The German government will pay more than €800,000 (£644,000) compensation to relatives of victims of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist group who killed 10 people over a six-year period.

Spouses and children of the victims will receive €10,000 each, siblings will get €5,000, and funeral costs will be refunded to the families.

The NSU killed eight Turks and one Greek, all shopkeepers or food vendors, from 2000 to 2006. They then shot a policewoman in Helibronn in 2007.

The culprits went undetected until November 2011 when a failed bank robbery led to two of the three robbers - Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Bohnhardt - committing suicide and the survivor surrendered to police and tipped them off about the Nazi cell.

Authorities have already paid €140,000 to victims of a nailbombing carried out in Cologne in 2004, where 22 people were injured.

Heinz-Josef Friehe, president of the Federal Office of Justice, said the decisions had been made in view of the "particular severity of the damage done or to alleviate any shortfall in income that may have occurred".

The killings sparked anger among Germany's 15 million immigrants and their families.

In February, German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a public apology for the authorities' failure to tackle the NSU, which eluded capture for more than a decade.

Germany