Bastille Day ‘celebrated’ in wake of soldiers’ deaths

France yesterday held its annual military parade on the Bastille Day national holiday, haunted by the killing a day earlier of five of its soldiers serving in Afghanistan.

In the wake of the killings, President Nicolas Sarkozy said that this year’s July 14 holiday, which saw the French military display its might on the Champs Elysees in Paris while warplanes and helicopters roared overhead, would be dedicated to the dead soldiers.

Before arriving at the parade, Mr Sarkozy visited a military hospital near the capital to visit soldiers wounded while serving as part of France’s 4,000-strong contingent in Afghanistan. Some wounded soldiers and their families sat alongside government ministers and top officials in a tribune at the end of the Champs Elysees to watch as thousands of troops marched or rode by on horseback.

The five soldiers killed on Wednesday were aged between 27 and 38. A suicide bomber targeted them as they protected a local tribal council in the Tagab valley of Kapisa province, east of Kabul. The deaths brought to 69 the number of French soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 2001, when they were deployed to support the US-led campaign to overthrow the Taliban regime and hunt Al-Qaeda militants.

Mr Sarkozy has said no French “combat units” would remain there after 2014, but would-be Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande has vowed that if he wins next May’s election he will have all troops home within a year.

Another possible Socialist candidate, party leader Martine Aubry, reacted to the deaths by renewing her call for a “precise and determined” withdrawal plan.

The French military is also in action in Libya, where the air force is taking a leading role in the Nato bombing campaign against Muammar Gaddafi’s regime and has dropped weapons to rebels fighting his forces.

French troops also helped overthrow former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo earlier this year after he refused to accept electoral defeat.

In all, France has 13,500 personnel deployed in overseas trouble spots.