France will carry out its first air strikes on the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria "in the coming weeks," Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Wednesday.

The French air force has been carrying out reconnaissance missions over Syria since September 8, and strikes will follow "in the coming weeks, as soon as we have clearly identified targets," Le Drian told France Inter radio.

Seven people were killed Tuesday when an avalanche swept them away in the French Alps, a local official told AFP, the deadliest snowslide to hit the popular mountain range this year.

"The toll has increased -- seven people have died," said the official, Pierre Besnard, who had earlier put the number of deaths at five, with two people missing.

French President Francois Hollande, whose country is carrying out surveillance flights over Syria, said Monday it would be "necessary" to carry out air strikes against Islamic State militants there.

"We announced surveillance flights that would allow us to prepare air strikes if they were necessary, and they will be necessary in Syria," he told journalists after talks with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.

British Prime Minister David Cameron inspected on Monday Syrian refugees in the eastern town of Terbol and later met with PM Tammam Salam to throw his support behind the Lebanese government.

Cameron said at a joint press conference with Salam at the Grand Serail that the UK will continue to assist Lebanon against the Islamic State extremist group and to provide aid over the refugee crisis.

The French government said Sunday it was determined to choke off the supply of weapons and disarm criminal gangs, several hours after a man was shot dead in the center of Marseille, the southern city known for its high crime levels.

"Within the next six weeks I will put forward a wide-ranging and extremely aggressive plan to fight against the trafficking and possession of weapons in our country," Interior Minister Bernard Cazenueve told Europe 1 radio.

President Muhammadu Buhari is eying closer ties with France, including on security, as Nigeria and its neighbors fight back against Boko Haram, his office said on Sunday.

The 72-year-old will spend three days in Paris from Monday following an invitation from his French counterpart Francois Hollande, Buhari's spokesman Femi Adesina said in an emailed statement.

Progress has been made on some contentious issues in the peace process, the foreign ministers of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France said after holding talks in Berlin on Saturday to prepare for a summit in Paris on October 2.

Germany's top diplomat, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said the meeting had been "less confrontational" than previous ones and that the warring sides were now "very close" to an agreement on withdrawing heavy weapons from the frontline.

French jihadist David Drugeon was likely killed in a coalition strike in Syria in July, a U.S. official said Friday.

Drugeon, an alleged bombmaker, has been described as a key figure in the al-Qaida offshoot Khorasan group, which American officials say is a dangerous militant outfit planning to attack the United States and other Western countries.

A former French minister stirred up controversy Friday after saying Germany "took our Jews and gave us Arabs" as France began taking some of the thousands of refugees arriving in Germany. 

Patrick Devedjian, a right-winger who served in the governments of presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, made the remark at a press conference, but quickly tried to backtrack on social media. 

Canada, India, Singapore and Egypt are "seriously" interested in buying France's two Mistral warships, a senior official has said, after Paris scrapped a deal to sell the vessels to Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

Louis Gautier, an official who advises the prime minister on defense and security matters, also told lawmakers this week that the cost of abandoning the agreement with Russia would be at least 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) if the government did not find another buyer, according to a summary of his comments obtained by AFP Friday.