A German woman has found her dead father's ashes behind a stack of boxes in a convenience store after courier company DHL was unable to deliver the urn to the church for his funeral, Bild newspaper reported.

When the courier could not find anyone at the Berlin church to take the box, he dropped it off at a local shop, the woman said. But the courier did not provide an address telling Silvia Hohaus where exactly she could find it later.

Hohaus spent a frantic few hours scouring shops in the neighbourhood.

A spokeswoman for DHL told Reuters the courier had done nothing wrong. "There was no mistake," Anke Blenn said. "He tried to deliver the package twice (to the church) but found nobody there."

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