World leaders gather in Normandy for D-Day memorial

World leaders and veterans paid tribute on the 70th anniversary of the World War Two D-Day landings to soldiers who fell in the liberation of Europe from Nazi German rule.

Wreaths, parades and parachute-drops honoured history’s largest amphibious assault on June 6th, 1944, when 160,000 US, British and Canadian troops waded ashore to confront German forces, hastening its defeat and the advent of peace in Europe.

Flanked by stooped war veterans, some in wheelchairs, US president Barack Obama joined French President Francois Hollande to commemorate victory and reaffirm US-French solidarity before the 9,387 white marble headstones of fallen US soldiers at the Normandy American Cemetery.

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US president Barack Obama and French president Francois Hollande (L) arrive through an honor guard to attend a joint French-US D-Day commemoration ceremony at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-mer, France. Photograph: Alain Jocard/EPA.

Mr Obama said the 80km stretch of Normandy coastline - where allied soldiers landed under fire on beaches codenamed Omaha, Utah, Gold, Sword and Juno - was a “tiny sliver of sand upon which hung more than the fate of a war, but rather the course of human history.”

“Omaha - Normandy - this was democracy’s beachhead,” said Mr Obama. “And our victory in that war decided not just a century, but shaped the security and well-being of all posterity.”

He sought to link the sacrifices of World War Two to US servicemen killed in combat since the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the United States by al-Qaeda Islamist militants.

The “9/11 generation of service members” understood that “people cannot live in freedom unless free people are prepared to die for it”, he said.

Mr Hollande declared that France "would never forget the solidarity between our two nations, solidarity based on a shared ideal, an aspiration, a passion for freedom".

Speaking earlier in the city of Caen, which was devastated in the fighting, Mr Hollande honoured French civilians killed during the allied invasion, calling D-Day “24 hours that changed the world and forever marked Normandy”.

Twenty-one foreign leaders are attending the series of commemorations, including Britain's Queen Elizabeth and prime minister David Cameron, Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper, Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel and president Vladimir Putin of Russia.

US Chief of Naval Operations Jonathan Greenert, speaking just before the cemetery tribute, said the main parallel between 1944 and now was the strength of US-allied ties.

“You cannot underestimate the power of a coalition and an alliance when it goes into action,” Mr Greenert said.

Reuters