Parisians bid goodbye to a year of unprecedented terror attacks when clocks chimed midnight Friday, as thousands of defiant revelers thronged the Champs-Elysees for New Year's Eve celebrations.

While the traditional fireworks display was canceled this year over fears of a terrorist attack, crowds still filled the iconic boulevard lined with trees donning sparkling garlands to welcome 2016.

France called Monday on the European Union to do more to detect false Syrian passports, especially in Greece and Italy, after two of the suicide bombers in the Paris attacks were found to be carrying such documents.

The attacks "unfortunately showed that some terrorists are trying to get into our countries and commit criminal acts by mixing in with the flow of migrants and refugees," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said in a letter to the European Commission.

Samy Amimour, one of the men that massacred 90 people at the Bataclan music venue in Paris, was buried north of the city, local officials said Sunday.

The 28-year-old was buried on Thursday in Seine-Saint-Denis suburb of Paris, where he grew up and his parents still live.

The French cabinet backed reform proposals Wednesday that could see the state of emergency called after last month's Paris attacks enshrined in the constitution.

Special policing powers used under the state of emergency -- such as house arrests and the right to raid houses without judicial oversight -- are currently based on an ordinary law which can be challenged at the constitutional court.

A Frenchman who killed his boss and pinned his severed head to a fence at an industrial gas factory has committed suicide in his jail cell, prison authorities said Wednesday.

Yassin Salhi, 35, hanged himself from the bars of his cell using electrical cable on Tuesday night, according to authorities at Fleury-Merogis prison, in the southern suburbs of Paris.

French forces killed or captured around 10 members of a jihadist movement in heavy fighting at the weekend in northern Mali, the French defense ministry said Tuesday.

The troops of France's Barkhane force engaged in a four-hour firefight overnight Saturday near Menaka against the Al-Qaida-linked group Al-Murabitoun, the ministry said in a statement issued in Paris.

The president of the French Senate has criticized new U.S. visa regulations that penalize Europeans who have visited Iran, saying they send the "wrong signal".

Gerard Larcher was speaking during a trip to Iran aimed at strengthening relations with France following a landmark deal to curb Tehran's nuclear program in return for a lifting of sanctions.

Belgian police have arrested a total of five people including two brothers during a series of arrests in connection with last month's Paris attacks, prosecutors said Monday.

Police arrested the two brothers and a third person in a raid on a house near the main tourist district in central Brussels on Sunday, the federal prosecutors office said in a statement.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian flew in to Moscow on Monday for a meeting with his Russian counterpart to request an increase in strikes against the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria.

Talks will also touch on how the two countries can share intelligence relating to the jihadist group, Le Drian told journalists before traveling to Russia.

Wanted fugitive Salah Abdeslam, suspected of involvement in last month's Paris attacks, got past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the Belgian investigation said Sunday.

Confirming a report in the French daily Le Parisien, the source quoted Hamza Attou, suspected along with Mohammed Amri of driving Abdeslam to Brussels the day after the coordinated November 13 attacks in which 130 people died.