The accused were sentenced in absentia to life in prison for the killings in Marzabotto in 1944, the worst massacre on Italian soil during the war, the ANSA news agency reported.

In all some 17 former Nazis, now aged from 81 to 88, were accused in the case, but the court acquitted seven.

"This judgment has been reached in the name of the Italian people and in accordance with the law after a very difficult trial," said the head of the military court, Vincenzo Santoro.

The main officer accused, Marshall Walter Reder, had already been sentenced to life by a military court in Bologna in 1951 but was freed in 1985.

The residents of Marzabotto, a town near Bologna, and two neighboring villages, Grizzana and Monzuno, were killed from September 29 to October 5, 1944.

The victims included some 300 women and 40 children under the age of two as well as five priests.

In court this week the Italian prosecutor Marco De Paolis said:"The members of the SS were not ordinary soldiers. They were like Al-Qaeda today, terrorists.