Moscow  - The Russian Centre for Forensic Medicine issued an unusual denial Saturday, saying German dictator Adolf Hitler didn't escape to a secret base at the South Pole at the end of World War II but died in Berlin.

Viktor Zvyagin, the head of the identification department, told the RIA Novosti news agency that "for the specialists in Russia and abroad there is no doubt that Hitler died on April 30, 1945."

Russian media reports had recently speculated that Hitler managed to flee Berlin before it fell to Russian troops.

The charred corpses of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun were found in a bomb crater in Berlin and this was proven by forensic tests, Zvyagin stressed. (dpa)