LONDON , England ( CNN ) -- DNA testing to try to identify hundreds of bodies buried in a mass grave during World War I will start this week , the British and Australian ministries of defense announced Monday . File photo shows a crane unearthing the mass grave in northern France . The bodies come from Fromelles in northern France , where thousands of British and Australian troops were killed or wounded in a single night in 1916 -- a night the Australian military still considers among the worst in its history . An exploratory dig in May of this year confirmed that there are between 250 and 300 bodies buried at the site . Enough DNA has been recovered from teeth and bones to make full-scale testing worthwhile , the British Ministry of Defence said . Pieces of uniforms including belt buckles and buttons have also been found , which will help with identification , the ministry said . `` Each one of these soldiers will be laid to rest with the dignity they deserve and we owe it to them to do all we can to identify them , '' British Veterans Minister Kevan Jones said in a statement . The DNA testing program will be the largest undertaking to identify individuals killed in combat ever commissioned , the ministry said . The announcement comes only a week after the burial of the last British veteran of World War I still living in the United Kingdom . Harry Patch died July 25 at the age of 111 , a week after fellow British World War I veteran Henry Allingham died at the age of 113 . So many soldiers died on the night of July 19 , 1916 , that many were never found , identified , or given a proper burial . Two divisions of Allied infantry had attacked a strongly fortified German position known as the Sugar Loaf . The defenders knew the British and the Australians were coming ; the terrain favored the Germans . As the British and the newly arrived Australians charged into battle , the Germans opened fire . By morning , about 2,300 British and Australian soldiers were dead . About 5,000 others were wounded . There has been speculation for decades that the Germans recovered hundreds of bodies and put them into mass graves , not forgotten , but anonymous . Last year , preliminary digs commissioned by the Australian government located five mass graves near the site of the battle . `` It 's the largest military find since the end of the Second World War , '' said a spokesman for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission . `` I have been on the commission almost 11 years and it 's like nothing I have ever experienced . I have never known anything to have this sort of numbers of possible remains , '' Peter Francis told CNN . The commission is in the middle of a 15-month project to disinter the bodies , attempt to identify them , and rebury them in individual graves in a new cemetery on the site . The resulting graveyard will be the first new one consecrated by the commission for almost 50 years , Francis told CNN by phone . The British and Australian governments have asked people who think their relatives may have died at the site to get in touch , Francis said . The cemetery will be dedicated on July 19 , 2010 -- the 94th anniversary of the battle . The bodies of more than 165,000 Commonwealth soldiers killed on the Western Front during the First World War are still missing , the commission says . The commission is a non-profit organization founded in 1917 that commemorates the dead of both world wars from the British Commonwealth .
DNA tests will attempt to identify remains of World War I fallen . Bodies removed from mass grave in Fromelles , northern France . Up to 300 bodies are believed to have been dug up .