Apparently with the help of his grandfather's diary, an Italian discovered a mass grave from the First World War.

For years, Sergio Boem searched for this place with the notes of his grandfather, an officer, reports the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero (Sunday).

With an archaeological investigation, twelve skeletonized bodies have been recovered in the past few days above the Tonale Pass on the border between Trentino and Lombardy.

The dead are said to be soldiers of the Austro-Hungarian army.

According to Boem, his grandfather, Ubaldo Ingravalle, wrote about the violence of the war in his diary entries.

The researcher explains his years of search that the officer could not have written the report on the mass grave without a reason.

"The exhaustion and horror after this day of fighting must have been great, and yet grandfather wanted to report personally on the hasty funeral.

He had never done that before.”

According to the diary, dozens of soldiers who fell in World War I during Operation Valanga (avalanche), a military action by Austria-Hungary, on June 13, 1918, are said to have been in the grave.

It is currently unclear whether other mortal remains can be recovered beyond the twelve dead.