Outrage after General de Gaulle’s tomb is vandalised

POLITICIANS in France have reacted with fury after the tomb of their wartime hero and former president General Charles de Gaulle was vandalised.

Edouard Philippe, the prime minister, described the incident as “an act against France”.

Police are hunting for two people, one of whom was filmed by security cameras on Saturday knocking a cross off the top of the tomb in Colombeyles-deux-eglises, the village in the east of the country where de Gaulle lived and is buried.

May 27 is known as the Day of the Resistance in France, a key date on the calendar where those who fought against the Nazis under the Vichy regime are remembered.

President Emmanuel Macron, in a statement from his office yesterday, asked that de Gaulle’s tomb be quickly repaired, adding that his memory is “dear to all French people”.

Mr Philippe tweeted his “sadness and consternation” while far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the vandalism “contemptible”.

“Shame on those who, by vandalising the tomb of General de Gaulle on this Day of the Resistance, insult France and its values,” she said.

Thousands visit the tomb every year to pay their respects to General de Gaulle, who led the French Resistance during the Second World War.

He went on to form the Fifth Republic in the 1950s and led the country for a decade, until 1969. He died in 1970 at the age of 79.