French President Francois Hollande said Thursday that a coalition waging a bombing campaign against the Islamic State group would "accelerate" air strikes.

"The pace of the interventions will be accelerated and France will play its role in this," Hollande said in a speech to ambassadors.

French President Francois Hollande lamented on Thursday the ongoing vacuum in the presidency, warning that it could become “dangerous.”

He hoped that “Iran and Saudi Arabia would contribute in ending the vacuum.”

Five French Foreign Legionnaires were killed Monday during a training exercise in the French Alps, the second mountain tragedy in France in less than a week.

Another six soldiers were injured near the resort of Valfrejus, with one in intensive care in hospital after suffering hypothermia.

World powers will remain "very vigilant" to ensure Tehran commits to a nuclear deal that has seen the West lift sanctions on Iran, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Monday.

The entry into force on Saturday of the July 14 deal between Iran and world powers "is a good thing... but we should be extremely strict in monitoring its implementation," he said.

The Saudi grant to the Lebanese army is not facing new obstacles and should be implemented “soon, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Saturday.

A high-ranking military source told the daily that “some technical details need to be addressed.”

A Belgian-Moroccan man who blew himself up during a police raid days after the Paris attacks had traveled in 2013 to Syria where he joined the Islamic State group, Belgian prosecutors said Friday.

Chakib Akrouh, a suspected gunman in the Paris attacks whose identity was released in Paris on Thursday, used a one-way ticket to fly from Brussels to Istanbul on January 4, 2013, the federal prosecutor's office said.

On a weekday night in a pub in the French capital, a group prop up the bar with beers in hand to share their experiences of the terror attacks that rocked Paris on November 13.

The survivors gather regularly for a drink after meeting on Facebook -- and say the get-togethers have become a lifeline because only people who were there can really understand.

Authorities in the northern French port of Calais were struggling to move hundreds of migrants into refitted shipping containers on Wednesday ahead of plans to bulldoze part of the notorious "Jungle" camp.

The government had planned to move 500-700 migrants and refugees out of the grim makeshift camp into refitted containers with heaters, electricity plugs and cribs for newborns.

The French government on Wednesday rejected criticism from Europe's top human rights watchdog that it was "ethnically profiling" suspects as part of the state of emergency imposed after the November attacks in Paris.

"I challenge what was said, particularly on ethnic profiling," said government spokesman Stephane Le Foll.

France has banned three Islamic associations which ran a mosque in the Paris area that was shut down following November's jihadist attacks on the capital, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said Wednesday.

"There is no place in the French Republic for groups which incite, and which call for terrorism or call for hate," Cazeneuve said.