A MASS grave where hundreds of British soldiers lost their lives in France during the First World War has been turned into a rubbish tip.

Diggers are churning up the battlefield and war veterans say it is impossible to walk across it without standing on human bones, tattered shreds of uniform and bits of military equipment.

There were 61,000 British and Commonwealth casualties at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

But now at the site of the battle at Auchy Les Mines, near Loos, northern France, bulldozers are ploughing up the ground and re-burying the human remains under tonnes of household rubbish and building waste.

Major Chris Lawton, of the Durham Light Infantry Museum, in Durham City, said: "To obliterate this battlefield and the remains of those DLI dead for a rubbish tip is not acceptable, especially as the men died to save France.

"It is maybe the passing of time, where today's generation wants to use the land for something else - but that is not acceptable to the DLI, as these sites were meant to be kept in perpetuity for those unknown soldiers who lie there."

Major Roger Chapman, of the Green Howard Museum, in Richmond, North Yorkshire, said: "We are extremely saddened that there is not the respect you would expect shown to the 650,000 British and Commonwealth troops and 1.3 million French soldiers who died defending France."

The owner of the field claims to have been given the go-ahead for the work by the local mayor.