French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen dies aged 96

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the historic leader of France's far-right, has died aged 96, his family told AFP.

Mr Le Pen, who had been in a care facility for several weeks, died at midday "surrounded by his loved ones", the family said in a statement.

He helped re-write the parameters of French politics in a career spanning 40 years.

Mr Le Pen, the co-founder of the National Front, sent shockwaves through France in 2002 when he made it to the second round of the presidential election on a staunch anti-immigration platform.

An unabashed nationalist, Mr Le Pen was the scourge of the European Union which he saw as a supranational project usurping the powers of nation states, tapping the kind of resentment that saw Britain vote to leave the European Union.

He boasted that the rise of the far right around Europe showed his ideas had gone mainstream.

He was often accused of racism and anti-Semitism and infamously dismissed the Holocaust as a detail of history.

His daughter Marine Le Pen took the party's leadership in 2011 and booted him out four years later, seeking to distance her movement from his extremist reputation.

The party, since renamed National Rally (RN), has made significant inroads.

It showed strong gains in last year's European Parliament elections and became the largest single party in a subsequent general election in France.

Jordan Bardella, RN party chief and the right-hand man of Ms Le Pen, said in a carefully-worded tribute that Mr Le Pen had "always served France".

"As a soldier in the French army in Indochina and Algeria, as a tribune of the people in the National Assembly and the European Parliament, he always served France and defended its identity and sovereignty," the 29-year-old said on X.

"Today I am thinking with sadness of his family, his loved ones, and of course of Marine, whose mourning must be respected."