The government may offer workers' compensation to Japanese victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York, labor ministry sources said Saturday.

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry is likely to recognize the victims as having suffered work-related accidents and issue insurance money if the victims or their families request it from the ministry, the sources said.

The move is unusual because the ministry generally does not handle deaths or injuries resulting from natural disasters or terrorist incidents as work-related accidents.

But the ministry made similar exceptions for victims of the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, as well as for the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake that hit Kobe and its vicinities, killing more than 6,400 people.

The ministry decided to recognize these two cases as work-related disasters on the grounds that people were working under circumstances where danger was inherent.

A senior ministry official said the ministry wants to make an exception of the New York case for the same reason.

In 1991 three employees of the Japan International Cooperation Agency were shot to death by antigovernment guerrillas in Peru while working as instructors in agricultural production.

It was the first terror-related case in which Japanese deaths were recognized as work-related.

Of the 24 Japanese who died or went missing in the terror attacks in the United States, 19 worked for Japanese companies.

To have their deaths or injuries recognized as work-related disasters while working overseas, workers need to register in advance for special overseas workers' insurance in addition to joining the domestic workers' insurance policy, the ministry said.

The ministry will decide whether to recognize the workers' cases after confirming they registered beforehand for the special overseas insurance polic and by looking into their working conditions at the time of the attacks , the sources said.