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The French inscription covers the five Normandy landing beaches, Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno, along with the Pointe du Hoc assault site. More than 150,000 Allied troops landed there on June 6, 1944, during the campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi occupation in World War II.

UNESCO has added World War II's D-Day landing beaches in northern France and Greece's Mount Olympus to the World Heritage List during a committee meeting in Busan, South Korea, on Sunday. The committee, which continues until Wednesday, also inscribed Japan's ancient capitals of Asuka and Fujiwara, along with South Sudan's Boma-Badingilo Migratory Landscape, the country's first World Heritage Site, the Associated Press reports.

Historic battlefields and ancient cultural landmarks recognised

The French inscription covers the five Normandy landing beaches, Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno, along with the Pointe du Hoc assault site. More than 150,000 Allied troops landed there on June 6, 1944, during the campaign to liberate Western Europe from Nazi occupation in World War II.

The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), which evaluates nominations for the World Heritage Committee, noted that the sites preserve German fortifications, bomb-scarred landscapes, Allied harbour structures and sunken vessels. It described them as marking an “event widely perceived as having enabled the return of freedom and heralded a lasting peace on the European continent.” ICOMOS also urged stronger monitoring and conservation efforts, highlighting threats from tourism, climate change, rising sea levels and nearby wind farm development.