Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea considered on Tuesday the flurry of political activity that the Lebanese capital is witnessing to press the election of a new head of state “useless.”

“The election of a new head of state is a mere Lebanese process that relies on the parliamentary blocs,” Geagea said in an interview with the Saudi newspaper al-Jazirah, lashing out at the two blocs that are impeding the process, the Free Patriotic Movement and its ally Hizbullah.

At least ten people were injured Monday, two seriously, when the driver of a van plowed into a Christmas market in the western French city of Nantes before stabbing himself, a source close to the investigation said.

Authorities in the central African nation of Burundi said Monday they had arrested the brother of a man who was killed in France after a suspected Islamist-motivated attack.

A spokesman for Burundi's National Intelligence Service said Brice Nzohabonayo was detained in the capital Bujumbura shortly after his brother Bertrand Nzohabonayo attacked a police station in the central French town of Joue-les-Tours.

President Francois Hollande on Monday urged the French not to panic as authorities probed the motives and profiles of two men who committed brutal weekend attacks while reportedly shouting "Allahu Akbar".

The country is reeling from the violence, which saw a man killed Saturday when he assaulted police officers in the central town of Joue-les-Tours and a driver plough into pedestrians Sunday in Dijon in the east, leaving 13 injured in a scene one witness described as "apocalyptic."

A Frenchman who ploughed into pedestrians shouting "Allahu Akbar" had been to psychiatric hospital 157 times and had no known links to jihadist groups, a prosecutor said Monday, easing concerns the attack was inspired by Islamic extremism.

The incident in the eastern town of Dijon left 13 people hurt in a scene one witness described as "apocalyptic" and came a day after a man assaulted police in the central town of Joue-les-Tours with a knife, slashing one officer in the face.

An Afghan journalist who was seriously injured during a suicide attack on a French cultural center died of his wounds in hospital on Sunday, officials said.

One German man was also killed and 20 other people wounded in the blast on December 11 during a performance at the packed auditorium of the French Institute of Afghanistan in the capital Kabul.

France on Sunday probed a suspected “radical Islamic” attack on police that left two officers seriously injured and the assailant dead, prompting security to be stepped up at police and fire stations nationwide.

Bertrand Nzohabonayo was shot dead Saturday after entering a police station in the central town of Joue-les-Tours armed with a knife, seriously wounding two officers -- slashing one in the face -- and hurting another.

Head of ODAS company Admiral Edouard Guillaud is scheduled to return to Lebanon next week in order to place the finishing touches of the Saudi-French arms deal for the army, reported the daily al-Mustaqbal on Sunday.

The French official is scheduled to arrive in Lebanon on Tuesday to make the final signatures of the deal ahead of its implementation.

A French-speaking jihadist threatened Friday to execute Lebanese soldiers held hostage by the Islamic State group, saying three prominent anti-IS Lebanese politicians would be responsible for their deaths.

The threat was made in a video Agence France Presse obtained from a Salafist cleric, Wissam al-Masri, who is mediating the release of 25 police and soldiers held by IS and the Syrian branch of al-Qaida the al-Nusra Front.

The French military mission in Afghanistan will officially end on December 31 when the last of its forces leave the country, the defense ministry said Friday. 

The departure of around 150 soldiers from Kabul will put an end to a 13-year mission as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).