President Frank-Walter Steinmeier honoured Nazi war victims in Guernica on Friday, becoming the first German leader to visit the Spanish town where hundreds of civilians were killed in 1937.

The elite Condor Legion razed the northern Basque town on April 26, 1937 in support of General Francisco Franco's rebels during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) alongside Fascist Italy.

Steinmeier and German First Lady Elke Buedenbender joined King Felipe VI at a ceremony held at a Guernica cemetery in memory of the victims, AFP journalists saw.

The heads of state then visited the town's Museum of Peace, which tells the story of the tragedy, viewed by historians as a precursor to the mass terror bombing of civilian targets during World War II.

Some 50 aircraft dropped 30 tonnes of explosives on Gu

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