Berlin - A 90-year-old man who was a lieutenant in Nazi Germany's forces went on trial in Munich on Monday for 14 murders during a World War II reprisal rampage in Italy.

The man has already been convicted once in absentia in La Spezia by an Italian military court of directing the June 26-27, 1944, atrocity at Falzano, a hamlet in Tuscany, but the September 2006 life-imprisonment sentence cannot be enforced in Germany.

Interrogated by German police for the Italian trial, he confirmed he had been an officer in battalion 818 of the Mountain Combat Engineers in Italy, but denied the atrocity.

At Falzano, the German Army shot three men and a woman in revenge for an ambush that killed two German soldiers.

The Germans returned a day later, locked village men in a house, and dynamited it, killing 11.

The case could potentially become the world's last war-crimes trial from the conflict.

Several other inquiries are still open, but prosecutors may not be able to marshal enough evidence before the other defendants die or become too infirm to stand trial.

The accused lived in Ottobrunn, a Munich suburb, after the war and was a town councillor for two decades.

His name has been published in Italy, but most German media do not name him because of defamation rules.

The district court has set 11 hearing days up to October 21. (dpa)