TRIBUTES will be paid to the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing at a US university tonight, nearly 20 years after the tragedy.

Syracuse University in New York lost 35 of its students when PanAm flight 103 blew-up over the town on December 21, 1988.

Representatives from Lockerbie will attend a dinner tonight as part of a week of commemorative activities which ends tomorrow.

The remembrance week is designed to educate the campus and wider communities about the "impact of the tragedy, and of terrorism" said Kelly Rodoski, chairwoman of the 20th Anniversary Commemoration Committee.

Adding that the university landscape was changed permanently by the disaster, she said: "This was the kind of event that occurred elsewhere, not in our part of the world and not on our campus. The fact that 35 young men and women in the prime of their lives, brimming with intellectual curiosity and spirit of adventure, were taken in a senseless act of violence was, and remains, incomprehensible."

Syracuse University runs a scholarship for Lockerbie pupils to study in the US.

Also forming part of the week is an exhibition of selected pieces from the Dark Elegy by Suse Lownenstein, whose son Alexander died in the tragedy.

Meanwhile, community groups in Lockerbie said they were planning a "low key" approach to the anniversary.