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The sacred Buddhist mountain of Wutai in China and Italy's Dolomite Mountains were among five new sites named Friday to UNESCO's World Heritage List.

The tidal flats and wetlands of the Wadden Sea in Germany and the Netherlands, Cape Verde's 15th century town of Cidade Velha and Burkina Faso's Loropeni ruins also became World Heritage Sites, UNESCO announced.

It also inscribed the Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park in the Philippines as an "extension" to the Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, which joined the World Heritage List in 1993.

The announcements were made on the fifth day of a meeting of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee in Seville, Spain.

The committee, which is meeting until June 30, is deciding which of 27 sites deserve to be added to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's heritage list of 881 sites that have "outstanding universal value."

UNESCO said Mount Wutai, a "sacred Buddhist mountain" in northern China that includes 53 monasteries, was named as a "cultural landscape."

It features "the Ming Dynasty Shuxiang Temple with a huge complex of 500 statues representing Buddhist stories woven into three dimensional pictures of mountains and water.

"Overall, the buildings on the site present a catalogue of the way Buddhist architecture developed and influenced palace building in China over more than one millennium."

The Dolomites in northern Italy comprise "a diversity of spectacular landscapes of international significance for geomorphology marked by steeples, pinnacles and rock walls," UNESCO said in a statement.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which makes recommendations to the UNESCO committee, said the mountains were chosen for "their outstanding natural beauty and the geological significance of their limestone formations."

UNESCO said the Wadden Sea "is one of the last remaining natural, large-scale, intertidal ecosystems where natural processes continue to function largely undisturbed.

"It is home to numerous plant and animal species, including marine mammals such as the harbour seal, grey seal and harbour porpoise."

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel welcomed the decision as "a great day for the protection of nature in Germany", and said the government now had an "obligation to make protection of the site a priority."

A Dutch environmental organisation, Bund, described it as "a great responsibility" for both countries, which must support "tourism that is sustainable and respectful of nature."

UNESCO said Cidade Velha "bears testimony to the history of Europe's colonial presence in Africa and to the history of slavery.

"The town of Ribeira Grande, renamed Cidade Velha in the late 18th century, was the first European colonial outpost in the tropics. Located in the south of the island of Santiago, the town features some of the original street layout, impressive remains including two churches, a royal fortress and Pillory Square with its ornate 16th century marble pillar."

UNESCO said the extension of the Tubbataha Reef Marine Park represents a "threefold increase in the size of the original property."

Josephine Langley, the IUCN's World Heritage Monitoring Officer, added that the park, "composed of two atolls and one reef, is home to a number of threatened and endangered species, such as the iconic Napoleon wrasse."

UNESCO announced Thursday it had removed Dresden's Elbe Valley from its World Heritage List because the eastern German city had gone ahead with the building of a road bridge "in the heart of the cultural landscape."

It is only the second site ever to have been removed from the list, after Oman's Arabian Oryx Sanctuary was dropped in 2007.

AFP