A man has set himself on fire Friday, shocking several passersby who later rushed to put out the flames.

The man in question set himself on fire in the center of the National Mall on Friday, causing some onlookers and joggers to immediately rush to his aid, throwing their shirts on him in their attempts to help put out the fire.

The man's motives were not made clear, and his identity has been kept secret, but it has caused panic in a city that has yet to recover after the mass-shootings on Capitol Hill, and the high-speed car chase that resulted in officers shooting dead a woman whose child was in the car with her.

Now dubbed "The Man on the Mall," he was said to have suffered severe injuries and had to be airlifted to a hospital.

Witnesses recount how the man stood by himself in the center of the Mall, emptying the contents of a gasoline can over himself before setting himself ablaze.

Witnesses say he was still visibly alive as the fire spread, and alarmed joggers took of their shirts to throw over him, attempting to extinguish the flames.

A spokesperson for the police department says that the man was conscious and was still breathing when found on the scene by authorities. He was thereby taken to the MedStar Washinton Hospital Center to be treated.

Police officials declare that they have not yet determined if the man's act of self-immolation was related to any kind of "articulation of any causes."

Self-immolation, the act of setting fire to oneself, has been used several times in the past as a form of protest. The most infamous of which are the self-immolation of Buddhist monks protesting the discrimination suffered by Buddhists in Ngô Đình Diệm's presidential administration in Southern Vietnam.