John
06-11-2010, 05:56 PM
Vandals have desecrated a British World War I cemetery in northeastern France's Pas-de-Calais region.
They daubed 12 soldiers' graves with pink swastikas and other Nazi signs.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the attack in a letter to the Queen.
Mr Sarkozy expressed "indignation and consternation", branding the desecrations "all the more revolting" since they came a week before he visits London for a commemoration of French wartime resistance.
"I condemn with the greatest firmness this horrible act and ask you to pass on my feelings of sympathy and solidarity, and those of the French people, to the families concerned and to all of the British people," Mr Sarkozy wrote.
The cemetery in the town of Loos-en-Gohelle holds the remains of more than 2,000 British and Canadian soldiers who died while fighting in an October 1915 battle there.
The graves are believed to have been vandalised overnight.
Police said they found swastikas and other graffiti including "SS" and the word "sex" in pink paint on a dozen graves of British soldiers
France's minister for veterans, Hubert Falco slammed the actions as "an insult to the memory" of the soldiers and an "insult to France".
John Kipling, the son of British writer Rudyard Kipling, was among those who died in the battle when he was 18. His grave was not touched.
They daubed 12 soldiers' graves with pink swastikas and other Nazi signs.
France's President Nicolas Sarkozy condemned the attack in a letter to the Queen.
Mr Sarkozy expressed "indignation and consternation", branding the desecrations "all the more revolting" since they came a week before he visits London for a commemoration of French wartime resistance.
"I condemn with the greatest firmness this horrible act and ask you to pass on my feelings of sympathy and solidarity, and those of the French people, to the families concerned and to all of the British people," Mr Sarkozy wrote.
The cemetery in the town of Loos-en-Gohelle holds the remains of more than 2,000 British and Canadian soldiers who died while fighting in an October 1915 battle there.
The graves are believed to have been vandalised overnight.
Police said they found swastikas and other graffiti including "SS" and the word "sex" in pink paint on a dozen graves of British soldiers
France's minister for veterans, Hubert Falco slammed the actions as "an insult to the memory" of the soldiers and an "insult to France".
John Kipling, the son of British writer Rudyard Kipling, was among those who died in the battle when he was 18. His grave was not touched.