President will visit D-Day site in France

PARIS — President Barack Obama will visit the American cemetery and memorial in the French region of Normandy today to commemorate the 65th anniversary of D-Day and the U.S. role in ending the Nazi occupation of Europe.

His D-Day observation follows an emotional tour Friday of a German concentration camp that his great-uncle helped liberate. The president also spent two hours Friday with U.S. troops at the Army's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are treated.

The Allies' invasion of Normandy marked "the beginning of the end of World War II, and many of the veterans of World War II are in the sunset of their years," Obama said Friday in Dresden, where he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met before touring the Buchenwald concentration camp. "And so having an opportunity to acknowledge them once again and the sacrifices they made was very important to me."

Obama will meet with French President Nicolas Sarkozy before the D-Day event, which British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Prince Charles and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper also will attend.

American, British, Canadian and Free French forces landed on four beaches on the French coast on June 6, 1944, to begin the liberation of Europe.

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach and the English Channel, includes the graves of 9,387 U.S. soldiers who died in connection with the invasion, according to the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Merkel on Thursday noted the symbolism of Obama's visit to Dresden, a city that was destroyed by Allied bombing and rebuilt after German reunification, as well as to Buchenwald, a forced labor camp where Nazis held an estimated quarter-million, about one in five of whom died there.

Obama's stops in Europe follow his speech Thursday in Cairo, Egypt, on improving U.S.-Muslim relations and seeking peace in the Middle East.

In France, Obama will reunite with first lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters, 10-year-old Malia and 7-year-old Sasha, who have been touring Paris and made a surprise visit to the Eiffel Tower Friday night.

The Obamas will go to Normandy together Saturday. Michelle and the girls were expected to stay in France until at least Monday. The president leaves Sunday.

Contributing: Associated Press