The wife of former French president Jacques Chirac was admitted to hospital Wednesday “to rest and recuperate” on the same day a prominent French politician falsely announced on Twitter that her husband had died, reports FRANCE 24.
Bernadette Chirac, 83, was said to be “exhausted” following her husband’s hospitalisation for a lung infection, the couple’s son-in-law Frédéric Salat-Baroux told AFP.
The news follows the Twitter announcement by former French housing minister Christine Boutin that Jacques Chirac, also 83, had died on Wednesday. His family denied the rumour.
"President Chirac is being treated for a lung infection and I want to pay homage to the exceptional quality of the medical teams," Salat-Baroux, who was the former president’s chief of staff from 2005 to 2007, said in response to Boutin’s tweet – “Mort de #Chirac” – that caused widespread outrage on the social network.
Chirac was hospitalised Sunday. Salat-Baroux, husband of Chirac's daughter Claude, asked for the family's "tranquillity" to be respected during Chirac's hospitalisation.
Chirac, who led France from 1995 to 2007, had just returned from a visit to Morocco with his wife Bernadette when he was admitted to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris.
The conservative Chirac, who served two terms as head of state, is probably best remembered internationally for his opposition to the US military intervention in Iraq in 2003.
A small stroke while in office in 2005 weakened him, and he is now rarely seen in public.