Graves of hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers that were killed during World War II have been vandalised at the Mierlo War Cemetery in Eindhoven.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission said it was "appalled" by the graffiti, which included Nazi symbols alongside random words and phrases.

In one example, the words 'MH17 lie' was daubed on a wall at the entrance to the cemetery, in an apparent reference to the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine in 2014.

A large swastika was painted on the inside of a small building on the site.

In a statement on its website, the commission said that the graffiti came just a week after a previous attack at the site.

'A human story'

"It is particularly distressing that someone has shown such a complete lack of respect during the lead up the 75th anniversary of the allied forces landing in The Netherlands," it said.

"Behind every one of those war graves is a human story of someone who gave their life while in service."

Constructed soon after the end of the war in 1945, the soldiers buried at Mierlo were mostly killed between September and November 1944, as the allies pushed the Nazis out of the Netherlands.

It contains 664 graves of soldiers from the Commonwealth - seven of them unidentified - and one Dutch war grave.