France would only deliver two warships ordered by Russia if there were concrete signs of lasting peace in Ukraine, the French defense minister said Thursday.

Russia has been accused by the West of arming and bankrolling a rebellion in eastern Ukraine, a charge Moscow denies.

A man shot dead his former lover and two other people at a family New Year party in northern France before turning the gun on himself in an apparent crime of passion, police said Thursday.

The 30-year-old also wounded three people, one seriously, with a hunting rifle in the attack, which took place in the early hours of Thursday morning on a quiet street in Arras, not far from the port of Calais.

A Cuban crackdown on dissident activists caused a new rift with the United States on Wednesday, the first diplomatic scuffle since this month's historic announcement of a renewal in ties.

Authorities arrested 51 dissidents Tuesday to stop them from attending an open mic session convened for Cubans to speak out about their future, said Elizardo Sanchez, the head of the officially banned Cuban Human Rights and National Reconciliation Committee.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian on Wednesday called upon the international community to act to prevent Libya from becoming a "sanctuary for terrorists."

Three years after dictator Moammar Gadhafi was toppled and killed in a NATO-backed revolt, Libya is awash with weapons and powerful militias, and run by rival governments and parliaments.

The last French troops in Afghanistan held a ceremony in Kabul on Wednesday to mark the end of their deployment after NATO combat operations closed down and as a new "train and support" mission takes over.

About 150 French soldiers who had been helping run the military airport handed over responsibility to a Turkish unit which will operate under the new NATO mission.

Five homeless men have died in France, authorities said on Tuesday, as temperatures plummeted well below freezing.

One 29-year-old man was found dead in the northern city of Douai on Saturday and two others died on Sunday, one 50-year-old man in Paris and a Belgian 46-year-old in southeastern France.

Heavy snowfall in the French Alps left some 15,000 drivers stranded overnight into Sunday, forcing many to pass the night in their cars and prompting officials to open emergency shelters.

The snow and ice hit as a rush of holidaymakers were heading to and leaving from ski resorts in the Savoie region in southeastern France, where authorities set up shelters in at least 12 towns.

A mother-of-two died on Friday in northern France after setting herself on fire in the courtyard of her home as her 18-month-old daughter slept inside, authorities said.

The incident involving the woman believed to be around 30 years old occurred in the town of Ambleteuse on the Channel coast north of Boulogne around midday.

A man who rammed his car into a French Christmas market, killing one person and injuring nine others, had nearly four times the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, a police source said Friday.

The 37-year-old man was found to have a blood alcohol reading of 0.18 in his system after the attack on Monday in the western city of Nantes. The legal limit in France is 0.05.

Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji on Tuesday signed a detailed agreement for equipping the army as part of the Saudi military grant to Lebanon.