Vandals in central France attacked a sculpture of an Algerian military hero who resisted France's colonisation of the North African country, just hours before it was inaugurated Saturday as a symbol of Franco-Algerian reconciliation. The lower part of the steel sculpture in the town of Amboise, where Emir Abdelkader was imprisoned from 1848 to 1852, was badly damaged in the attack which comes in the midst of an election campaign dominated by harsh rhetoric on immigration and Islam. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES