(ANSA) - Berlin, May 27 - Hamburg prosecutors on Wednesday shelved a case against ex Nazi officer Gerhard Sommer for the massacre of 560 civilians in the Tuscan village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema during WWII. The 93-year-old was deemed unfit to stand trial for the August 12, 1944 atrocity that included the slaughter of 119 children, lawyer Gabriele Heinecke told ANSA. Germany decided to reopen the case in August last year, after Stuttgart prosecutors in May 2013 rejected requests from victims' groups to reopen the investigation while five of the alleged perpetrators were still alive. That bid for a new probe followed a study by Italian-German historian Carlo Gentile, who said he found flaws in earlier investigations carried out by German prosecutors. In October 2012, after a 10-year investigation, German magistrates said a lack of evidence forced them to drop the case against the surviving Nazi soldiers accused in the massacre. In its own investigation and trial, the Italian military court condemned 10 of the ex-Nazi officers to life in prison in absentia, including Sommer. Germany refused to grant Italy's request for the arrest of those still alive. Italian prosecutors have issued European arrest warrants for as many as 15 German former members of the military without success. Under the terms of a postwar settlement, Germany is not required to extradite alleged war criminals to Italy. The atrocity against the villagers and refugees hiding in the hillside village of Sant'Anna lasted only three hours and came in retaliation for actions by the Italian Resistance against the Nazi occupation. Nazi soldiers rounded up civilians, locking them in barns and buildings before systematically executing many with machine guns. In other cases, grenades were thrown into locked buildings and basements to kill the people trapped inside. Even livestock was killed in what was described as a "scorched earth" operation.

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