Macron, May mark D-Day anniversary

As part of ceremonies to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy, French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday welcomed British Prime Minister Theresa May to inaugurate a memorial to honor the sacrifice of British soldiers.

The commemoration ceremony started at 7:26 a.m. local time (0526 GMT), when a lone piper played a lament on a section of the Mulberry Harbor to mark the exact moment the first British soldier landed on Gold Beach in Normandy 75 years ago.

"We are where on June 6, 1944 nearly 25,000 British soldiers landed to liberate France from the barbarous yoke of the Reich," Macron addressed the gathering.

"This memorial is the symbol of the links between the United Kingdom and France and nothing will ever erase these links made of bloodshed..." he said.

As Britain is preparing to quit the European Union (EU), the French president recalled the spirit of the D-Day to promote Paris-London ties and stressed the need to keep bilateral links after Brexit.

He told British attenders: "Whatever it takes, we will always stand together, because this is our common destiny."

In her last major international event before quitting office, May, for her turn, paid tribute to the "raw courage" of soldiers who had been engaged in "one of the greatest battles for freedom this world has ever known."

"If one day can be said to have determined the fate of generations to come, in France, in Britain, in Europe and the world, that day was the 6th of June 1944," she said.

Honoring almost 25,000 British soldiers who landed on Gold Beach in the summer of 1944, the two leaders have laid the first stone of a new memorial site at Ver-sur-Mer, one of the key sites for British troops during the D-Day landings.

Later, Macron joined his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump at the Normandy American Cemetery.

Wreaths, parades, parachute-landings and fireworks will be staged to mark the D-Day Landings and the Battle of Normandy during which U.S., British and Canadian troops waded ashore to confront Nazi Germany's forces, hastening its defeat during the World War II.