A 94-year former Nazi SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp has gone on trial in Germany over the murder of at least 170,000 people, the BBC reports.

Prosecutors say Reinhold Hanning met Jewish prisoners as they arrived at the camp in occupied Poland and may have escorted some to the gas chambers.

Mr Hanning has admitted being a guard but denies involvement in mass murder.

He is being tried in the city of Detmold, in what is likely to be one of the last cases of its kind.

Mr Hanning is one of four elderly former Nazi guards – three men and a woman – who are due to go on trial in the coming months.

The Nazis killed about 1.1m people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews.