Man accused of lighting cigarette from memorial flame arrested in France
It comes after a video posted on social media appears to show a man stooping and lighting up in the eternal flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, before calmly walking away in front of a group of bystanders.
The incident has sparked outrage across France, with officials condemning it as an insult to the memory of fallen soldiers.
France's Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau described the act as "indecent and pathetic".
"The man who desecrated the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier by lighting a cigarette with the memorial flame was arrested in Paris for violating a burial site, tomb, urn, or monument erected in memory of the dead. He was taken into custody and admitted the facts," he wrote on X.
The memorial, which was first unveiled in 1920, contains the remains of a soldier killed in the First World War and serves as a tribute to all of France's fallen troops.
"You cannot ridicule French remembrance and get away with it," wrote Patricia Mirallès, Secretary of State for Veterans and Remembrance, on X.
"This flame does not light a cigarette, it burns for the sacrifice of millions of our soldiers," said Miralles.
"This is an insult to our dead, to our history and to our nation."
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