Leaders Mark Centenary Of WWI's Longest Battle

The leaders of France and Germany are commemorating 100 years since the Battle of Verdun - the longest of the First World War.

More than 300,000 soldiers from the two countries were killed and hundreds of thousands more were wounded in the fight which lasted 10 months.

President Francois Hollande of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany laid a wreath at a military cemetery in Consenvoye, near Verdun, where 11,148 German soldiers are buried.

The main ceremony in northeast France took place later in the day at the Douaumont Ossuary, a memorial to 130,000 unidentified troops from both sides of the conflict.

It was there that in 1984 former French president Francois Mitterrand and the-then chancellor of West Germany Helmut Kohl held hands during the French national anthem in a symbolic gesture of Franco-German friendship.

Mr Hollande underlined the need for European unity at a time when the EU is under pressure from the migrant crisis and a possible British exit from the bloc.

The two leaders want their nations' good relations to be a source of hope amid the current instability and Mr Hollande praised the city of Verdun as "the capital of peace".

He said: "Verdun is a city that represents - at the same time - the worst, where Europe got lost, and the best, a city being able to commit and unite for peace and French-German friendship."

Mrs Merkel said: "Verdun is more than the name of your town - Verdun is also one of the most terrible battles humanity has experienced."

Later in the day, she said the dead of Verdun were "victims of bigotry and nationalism, of blindness and political failure".

She added the best way of honouring them was to remember "the lessons that Europe drew from the catastrophes of the 20th century - the ability and willingness to recognise how necessary it is not to seal ourselves off but to be open to each other".

Some villages destroyed in the fighting were never rebuilt, as the battlefield remains strewn with millions of unexploded shells.

The area is still so dangerous that housing and farming are banned.

The two leaders were also due to discuss the EU migrant crisis and the UK referendum on 23 June.

Some 163,000 French and 143,000 German troops died in the Battle of Verdun which took place between February and December 1916, and 60 million shells were fired.

With no survivors left to remember the war, the commemoration events focused on educating young people, including 4,000 French and German children.

In a battle re-enactment, choreographed by German film-maker Volker Schloendorff, the children fell to the ground among the white crosses to symbolise death before standing up again to represent hope.

Later the French and German leaders met some of the children.

Mr Hollande heard from a teenager who said his ancestor had been gassed during World War One, to which the French leader replied that the "same gas" was recently used in Syria, referring to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad in 2013.

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