HIROSHIMA, Aug. 1 Kyodo -

Paper cranes in front of a monument in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park were destroyed in a suspected case of arson early Friday, the police said.

The police said they received a telephone call from a passerby at around 8 a.m. informing them that cranes placed in glass cases in front of the Children's Peace Monument were burning.

The fire was put out about 10 minutes later, but all of the roughly 140,000 paper cranes inside two of nine glass cases were destroyed in the fire, police and fire department officials said.

The police said they are questioning one of three young men seen on footage of a surveillance camera near the monument at around the time of the incident.

The surveillance camera was put up by the Hiroshima city authorities after other paper cranes at the same monument were destroyed in an arson case in February last year.

In April last year, the cranes were placed inside fortified glass cases 1 meter wide and around 2 meters tall to protect them from the wind and rain.

The Children's Peace Monument was built in 1958 through donations in memory of a girl who contracted leukemia after being exposed to the radiation from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. ==Kyodo