French Find Remains of German Soldiers

The remains of five German soldiers captured and shot by the French resistance in June 1944 have been discovered by local people near a village in the mountains of southeast France, its mayor said Thursday. Last month a hunter found bones protruding from the earth in a ravine about five kilometres (three miles) from Entrevennes, which lies in the Alps about 100 kilometres north of the Mediterranean coast. He contacted police, who called in professional archaeologists to excavate the site. "They found five bodies, with buttons, helmets and four identity tags. The bodies were riddled with bullets. We knew straight away who they were," mayor Catherine Weirich told AFP. For more than 60 years, the people of Entrevennes have known that five soldiers from a nearby German Luftwaffe air force observation post were killed by the Communist resistance group FTP between June 16 and 18 1944, but the place has always been kept secret.