Prosecutors in France have asked magistrates to drop legal proceedings against five French military officers linked to a massacre of ethnic Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.

Investigators said they found no evidence of complicity by the French peacekeeping troops.

They had been accused by survivors of abandoning Tutsis in the Bisesero region, leading to a massacre by ethnic Hutu extremists.

In March, a major French report concluded that France bore “serious and overwhelming” responsibilities linked to the Rwandan genocide, but cleared it of complicity.

Some 800,000 mainly ethnic Tutsis were killed in just over three months in 1994.