France on Sunday celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Provence landings, "Operation Dragoon", the offensive in southern France on August 15, 1944 against German forces following the bigger and bloodier D-Day landings in Normandy.

French President Jacques Chirac paid homage to all about 450,000 troops from more than 20 countries who helped free France fromHitler's grasp in World War II and awarded the Legion of Honor medal to the city of Algiers for its role in France's liberation, French television TF1 reported.

"France will never forget the blood spilled by your children for liberty," Chirac said aboard the French nuclear carrier Charles De Gaulle, off French southern post Toulon.

The soldiers "paid a heavy price for victory... They have mixed their blood with ours forever," he told the French and foreign officials from more than 20 countries, including 14 African heads of state.

US Vice President Dick Cheney and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declined France's invitations to attend the ceremonies. Instead, US Undersecretary for Benefits in the Department of Veterans' Affairs Daniel Cooper and British Veterans Minister IvorCaplin were present at the meeting.

After decorating 21 veterans with the Legion of Honor medal, Chirac bestowed the Legion of Honor, created by Napoleon Bonapartein May 1802 for valor in French military or civil service, on the Algerian capital of Algiers for its role in France's liberation.

"It was in Algiers, seat of France's fighting institutions... and opposite the occupied mother country, that a French army was recreated," Chirac said.

"This role, so crucial and so singular, deserves to be recognized," he said, adding that "That is why I have decided, exceptionally, to confer upon the city of Algiers, as capital of fighting France, the cross of the Legion of Honor."

France extended its gratitude notably to African veterans, besides the British and American soldiers, via this ceremony grouping a flotilla of 19 French and 8 foreign vessels moved westward from Antibes to pass the Charles de Gaulle and a dozen of airplanes flying by.

About 80 veterans were singled out to be decorated with the Legion of Honor medal by Chirac and French ministers, other veterans from Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Mauritania, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Togoand Tunisia -- all former French colonial possessions -- were alsodecorated.

"History remembers that the French army was rich of diversity of what we called Empire that General De Gaulle wanted to make in Community," said French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin when he received some African high officials in Paris earlier in the day.

The Provence landings, following the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, was referred to as "another D-Day".

Source: Xinhua