French police on Monday were hunting armed robbers who escaped after holding up a store in a shopping mall near Paris, prompting special forces to intervene and seal off the area.

The three men -- one of whom was thought to be an employee of the shop -- burst into the Primark store in Villeneuve-la-Garenne early Monday, said a police source who wished to remain anonymous.

Two alleged members of the Basque separatist group ETA, including a man suspected of killing a policeman in 2010, have been charged and remanded in custody in France, a judicial source said Sunday.

Xabier Goyenechea Irragori and Joseba Inaki Reta, who count among those most wanted by Spanish authorities, were arrested last week in the southwestern village of Osses near Spain.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Friday that his French counterpart Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel had pressed him to ensure partial self-rule for the pro-Russian separatist east.

The rare admission by Ukraine's Western-backed leader marked another sign of European impatience with the fighting that still engulfs the former Soviet republic five months after the signing of a broad truce deal.

A French court on Friday jailed the leader of a local Islamist group for nine years for "criminal association with a terrorist group."

Mohamed Achamlane, 37, the leader of Forsane Alizza, also called the "knights of pride", was one of 15 members of the group on trial for plotting terrorist attacks.

The United States on Thursday asked the U.N. Security Council to set up an investigative panel to identify those behind deadly chlorine gas attacks in Syria.

The panel comprised of experts from the United Nations and the OPCW chemical watchdog could be able to establish whether President Bashar al-Assad's forces are carrying out the attacks, as western countries claim.

French far-right veteran Jean-Marie Le Pen scored another victory Wednesday when a court suspended a ballot organized by the National Front (FN) party he founded on whether to scrap his post as honorary president.

Embroiled in a bitter feud with his daughter Marine who now runs the FN, Le Pen announced last week he would take legal action to try to block the party from changing its statutes and eliminating his post.

Global powers wrestling for a historic nuclear deal with Iran gave themselves yet more time Tuesday after foreign ministers failed to bridge what one diplomat called "very, very, very tough" remaining issues.

Iran and the P5+1 group -- the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany -- effectively gave themselves until Friday to agree a deal by extending the terms of a 2013 interim accord under which Iran has been curtailing its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief.

France said on Tuesday its special forces in Mali killed an Al-Qaida commander who had been released from prison in a swap for a French hostage.

The army said Ali Ag Wadossene, one of the "operational leaders" of Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), died on Sunday in the northeastern town of Kidal, while two other "terrorists" were captured.

At least 150 detonators and a stock of plastic explosives have been stolen from a military base in France, triggering immediate probes into a theft that has authorities on high alert.

Thieves broke into the vast army logistics base in Miramas near Marseille in southern France on Sunday night after cutting through a wire fence.

France can't take the risk of Greece leaving the eurozone, which would have an effect across the globe, the prime minister said on Tuesday, adding that the basis for a deal with Athens was there.

"France is convinced that we can't take the risk of Greece leaving the eurozone," a move that would affect economies across the globe, Manuel Valls told French radio. "The basis for a deal exists... There is no taboo subject when it comes to (Greek) debt, on the restructuring."