A hero of the French Resistance who saved 350 Jews from the Nazis has died aged 108.

Georges Loinger is said to have saved hundreds of children after he escaped the Nazis who captured him during the German invasion of France, when he was a French Army soldier.

One of his rescue methods was to take children to an unguarded section of the Swiss border to play a ball game, then kick it towards the fenceand send the children running towards it.

In an interview with The Tablet magazine earlier this year, he said: "I threw a ball a hundred metres towards the Swiss border and told the children to run and get the ball.

"They ran after the ball and this is how they crossed the border."

Mr Loinger was himself Jewish, born in Strasbourg in 1910. He claimed the fact he did not look Jewish was the reason he could move around without suspicion.

He said: "Sport made me the opposite of an anguished Jew... I walked with great naturalness. Besides, I was rather pretty and therefore well-dressed."

His heroism won him the Resistance Medal, the Military Cross and the Legion d'Honneur after the war.

His cousin was mime artist and fellow Resistance fighter Marcel Marcoux.

Sacha Ghozlan, president of the Union of Jewish Students of France, tweeted: "He saved hundreds of Jewish children from Nazi barbarity by secretly passing them to Switzerland.

"Every testimony of Georges Loinger in a college was an event... May his memory enlighten our commitment."