Aust to help fund WWI museum expansion

Passchendaele : Tyne Cot Cemetery. Photo / Supplied

Australia will help fund a World War I museum in Belgium that houses artefacts from a battlefield where more than 11,000 diggers died.

Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 in Zonnebeke is being expanded to recognise the nations that took part in the critical eight-week battle.

The Australian Army suffered about 38,000 casualties including 11,00 killed in action or died of wounds.

"To this day, that period remains Australia's most costly experience of war," Veterans Affairs Minister Warren Snowdon said at Passchendaele.

The government will provide the museum with A$270,000 ($339,820) in funding.

It would help honour the service of more than 290,000 Australians who served on the Western Front and the 46,000 who died, Mr Snowdon said.

The expanded museum will form part of the Australian Remembrance Trail which is being established by the Australia in conjunction with French and Belgian communities.

The trail will link sites of the most significant Australian battles of the war including Ypres and Zonnebeke in Belgium, and Fromelles, Bullecourt, Pozieres, Mont St Quentin, Le Hamel and Villers-Bretonneux in France.

- AAP