Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen campaign HQ building hit by arson attempt

Fire on ground floor of building that houses presidential candidate’s headquarters causes little damage

Marine Le Pen at a campaign rally
Marine Le Pen at a campaign rally in Arcis-sur-Aube. Photograph: Chesnot/Getty Images
Marine Le Pen

Marine Le Pen campaign HQ building hit by arson attempt

Fire on ground floor of building that houses presidential candidate’s headquarters causes little damage

Agence France-Presse in Paris

A building housing the far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s campaign headquarters has been hit by an arson attempt. Only minor damage was caused.

Firefighters were called at 2.40am on Thursday to the ground-floor offices on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honore, in central Paris.

A fire service spokesman said the fire was quickly brought under control and damaged only the door and a doormat.

The upper floors of the building, on one of the French capital’s most exclusive streets, close to the president’s Élysée Palace, house Le Pen’s campaign offices.

The anti-globalisation, anti-EU Le Pen is neck-and-neck with centrist Emmanuel Macron in polls for the first round of the election on 23 April.

A police source said the cause of the fire was “not natural and probably criminal”, adding that the graffiti slogan “FN vs KLM” was found nearby.

A group calling itself Fight Xenophobia contacted AFP to claim the attack, which it said was carried out with “Molotov cocktails”.

The caller, who refused to give a name, also claimed to have carried out a similar attack on a far-right newspaper and said the action would continue until the election.

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