France charges two over fatal dog mauling of 93-year-old

French authorities have charged two breeding centre employees with involuntary manslaughter after a dog killed a 93-year-old woman in the south of the country, said a public prosecutor on Friday.

An 18-year-old apprentice at a kennel specialising in breeding large Argentine mastiffs was walking three dogs in a cemetery northwest of the city of Nimes when one of the dogs escaped its leash and attacked the village's former mayor.

The Dogo Argentino fatally wounded the 93-year-old, who was visiting a relative's grave in the village of Canaules-et-Argentieres.

Both the 43-year-old manager and the apprentice were charged with involuntary manslaughter but the 18-year-old was released, the prosecutor said.

The manager and her twin sons, aged 19, were also charged with crime scene tampering after they removed the dog from the village before local authorities arrived.

Dogo Argentinos are large, muscular dogs with powerful jaws who can weigh between 30 to 45 kilograms when fully grown.

The apprentice initially told police the dog was a "stray" but later explained in custody that the manager and her sons pressured her to say that.

She confessed "it was a ploy cooked up by the manager to avoid taking responsibility", said public prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini.

The kennel manager is already due to be tried in September in a different case linked to "violence", added Grini.