Obama Tweets 68th Anniversary D-Day Tribute

U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday marked the 68th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, with a personal tweet, which said the deeds of valiant soldiers are not forgotten.

"68 years ago today - D-Day - the brave members of the Allied Forces stormed the beaches of Normandy. We have never forgotten their heroism. -bo," Obama said, his initials denoting a tweet composed by him and not an aide.

Obama has more than 16 million followers on Twitter.

Three years ago, Obama personally took part in 65th anniversary tributes for fallen D-day soldiers, overlooking Omaha Beach and eulogized 9,387 U.S. soldiers killed in the Battle of Normandy after the landings.

"It was unknowable then, but so much of the progress that would define the 20th century, on both sides of the Atlantic, came down to the battle for a slice of beach only six miles long and two miles wide," he said.

In what remains the biggest amphibious assault in history, some 156,000 Allied personnel landed in France on June 6, 1944.

An estimated 10,000 Allied troops were left dead, wounded or missing, while Nazi Germany lost between 4,000 and 9,000 troops, and thousands of French civilians were killed.