A former Auschwitz guard has been sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of being an accessory to the deaths of 170,000 people.

Reinhold Hanning, 94, was a former SS Unterscharfuehrer (sergeant) who served as a guard at the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland between January 1943 to June 1944.

During his trial he apologised for serving as a camp guard despite knowing that people were being killed.

The court heard Hanning met mostly Jewish prisoners as they arrived at the camp, with prosecutors saying he may have even escorted some of the doomed inmates to the gas chambers.

The trial could be one of Germany's last Holocaust trials.