LE HAVRE (AFP)---Police on Sunday arrested five people suspected of desecrating 180 graves, a quarter of them Jewish, in northern France, the third such attack on French cemeteries in as many weeks.

Police were questioning the five who were to be charged later, the
attorney-general’s office in the neighbouring regional capital Rouen said in a statement. The graves were located in the coastal city of Le Havre.

Earlier on Sunday, two men and a youth confessed to desecrating the gravestones of French Muslim soldiers in a military cemetery in Arras in northeastern France on Thursday.

The men, both aged 22, and a 16-year-old admitted carrying out the attack on Wednesday night for racist reasons, prosecutor Jean-Pierre Valensi said.

He said their motivation was "somewhat confused, a mix of Nazi and neo-Nazi and skinhead ideology. One of them said Hitler was his idol."
The graves of 52 soldiers were daubed on with swastikas and Nazi slogans like "Heil Hitler" in the ossuary of the Notre Dame de Lorette cemetery, France’s biggest military graveyard, where the remains of many thousands of soldiers killed in WWI are buried.

All three have been remanded in custody. The two adults will appear in court in Arras on Wednesday, where they could face being jailed for five years and fined 75,000 euros. The minor will be dealt with by a
juvenile court.

Victor Elgressy, president of the Jewish Consistoire in Rouen, visited the site at the Sainte-Marie cemetery together with Le Havre mayor Antoine Rufenacht. He said:"Whatever ideological motives the perpetrators may put forward, these acts are intolerable and inexcusable.""This is one of the most ignoble acts that man can commit against man." He said the attackers went for Jewish graves first, painting black swastikas and Celtic crosses on tombstones, before desecrating other graves in the cemetery.

Police are also investigating an attack three weeks ago on a Jewish
cemetery in the northern French city of Lille, which caused an outcry from political leaders.

President Jacques Chirac led the condemnation of the desecration of 51 gravestones on April 1. "Many were knocked down, some broken" in the attack, said Lille prosecutor Philippe Lemaire.

In a message to the president of the Jewish community in Lille, Chirac said he condemned "this unspeakable and intolerable act" and expressed his sympathy to the families affected.

"I have asked the government to do everything possible to find the
perpetrators of this infamy so that they are severely punished," said Chirac. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin condemned the "cowardly and dishonourable" vandalism and expressed his solidarity with the Jewish community. 

Sunday's desecration in Le Havre happened only hours before the first round of French presidential election.

Early turnout reached levels not seen since 1981 in France’s 44.5 million-strong electorate.

Only four candidates, including the conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist Segolene Royal, had a real chance of being among the top two to reach a final round of voting May 6.

The new president will succeed Jacques Chirac.