Visiting French Prime Minister Manuel Valls shied away at the last moment from calling China and France faithful "allies" on Friday.

The description was included in the advance text of a speech to businessmen distributed to the press.

Japan's Katsuhiro Otomo on Thursday became the first manga cartoonist to win a lifetime achievement award at France's renowned international Angouleme comics festival.

The 60-year-old is known the world over for the cult manga series Akira, set in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo built on the ashes of a city that was destroyed by a blast that triggered World War III.

France's education minister on Thursday defended school staff in the southern town of Nice for calling in police to talk to an eight-year-old boy who voiced sympathy for the Paris attackers.

"I say forcefully: not only did they act correctly, but their monitoring, teaching and social work is useful and I thank them," Minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said.

The EU will target new individuals with sanctions over their involvement in the conflict in Ukraine, France said Thursday as the 28-nation bloc's foreign ministers met to discuss fresh measures against Russia.

"We will show the EU's very strong unity and take all necessary steps, including extending and expanding the individual sanctions, in order to secure a return to a negotiated solution," France's European affairs minister Harlem Desir told reporters in Brussels.

An eight-year-old boy in France was questioned by police for half an hour Wednesday after he allegedly made comments in school in praise of terrorists, police said.

The child triggered concern when he refused to take part in a minute's silence at his school in the southern city of Nice after Islamist gunmen shot dead 12 people at the Paris offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on January 7, according to Marcel Authier, in charge of the region's public security.

For insight into why France is increasingly worried about large sections of its society becoming fertile turf for jihadist recruiters, the southern town of Lunel offers a singular example.

On Tuesday, five people were arrested around Lunel by authorities investigating the departure of about 20 residents from the suburban Montpellier town to join Islamist fighters in Syria.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called Tuesday for international cooperation against extremism, saying Muslims have been the first victims of "terrorism".

"No one fights under the name of religion," Fabius told journalists in Kuwait, the first Muslim country he has visited since last month's deadly attack by Islamist gunmen on French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Officials investigated Tuesday how a fighter jet crashed during NATO training exercises at an air force base in Spain, killing 11 military personnel leaving others with serious burns.

Nine French and two Greek personnel died and about 20 people were injured after the two-seater F-16 crashed into parked aircraft at the Los Llanos base in southeastern Spain.

President Francois Hollande on Tuesday vowed to combat "unbearable" rising anti-Semitism in France, after figures showed anti-Jewish acts doubled over the past year.

"France is your homeland," Hollande said at a Holocaust memorial in Paris, vowing that the government will present "a wide-ranging plan to counter racism and anti-Semitism by the end of February."

At least five people were arrested during an anti-jihadist operation in southern France that was still ongoing early Tuesday, a security source said.

The operation took place in the small town of Lunel east of Montpellier in southern France, from where around 20 young people have left for Syria. Six of them, aged 18 to 30, have been killed since October.