Leaders marking World War II anniversary

Europe paid solemn tribute today to victims of World War II as Angela Merkel lamented the "endless suffering" caused by Germany amid ceremonies marking 70 years since the conflict began.

Veterans of the six-year conflict, which claimed an estimated 50 million lives, joined Poland's president and prime minister at a pre-dawn ceremony in the port of Gdansk -- the venue of the first battle on September 1, 1939, when a German ship fired on a small Polish naval base.
    
"We are here to remember who in that war was the aggressor and who was the victim, for without an honest memory neither Europe, nor Poland, nor the world will ever live in security," prime minister Donald Tusk said.

The ceremony in Gdansk began at 4:45 am (local time), the exact time when the first shots were fired, and further commemorative events will be held throughout the day in and around Westerplatte, a peninsula on the edge of Gdansk.

German chancellor Merkel and Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin were among the world leaders expected in Gdansk later in the day to recall history's bloodiest conflict, whose legacy endures and divides to this day.

Ahead of her departure, Merkel acknowledged the responsibility that her country bore for triggering the conflict but also recalled the fate of ethnic Germans expelled at its end.