France's prime minister revealed Monday that seven French nationals or residents, including six converts to Islam, had committed suicide attacks in Syria and Iraq.

Speaking in parliament as he defended controversial draft spy laws, Manuel Valls said that of the hundreds of French people who had made their way to Islamic State-held territory, seven had died staging the suicide operations.

More than three months after Islamist attacks in Paris that killed 17, French MPs on Monday began debating controversial new laws allowing spies to hoover up data from suspected jihadists.

The draft laws have sparked a firestorm of protest from rights groups, which charge they infringe on individuals' privacy.

Saudi Arabia gave a royal welcome to France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius during a visit that highlighted a deepening of ties with major powers beyond traditional ally the United States.

The reinforcement of links with Paris comes as Riyadh worries over an Iran nuclear deal and fights Iran-backed rebels in neighboring Yemen.

The foreign ministers of France, Spain and Germany paid tribute on Monday to the victims of the Germanwings crash in the French Alps at Barcelona airport, where the flight took off last month.

French foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Spanish Foreign Minister Manuel Garcia-Margallo and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier laid a wreath at a memorial stone placed at the airport in honor of the victims.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of France's National Front (FN), pulled out of regional elections Monday and anointed his granddaughter in his place, after a fierce public spat with his daughter who now leads the far-right party.

The move promises to ease tensions both within the Le Pen family and the anti-European, anti-immigration FN, which has enjoyed considerable electoral success in recent years as Marine Le Pen seeks to clean up its racist and anti-Semitic image.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's National Front, said he was pulling out of regional elections Monday after a fierce public spat with his daughter who now leads the far-right party.

Le Pen incurred the wrath of Marine Le Pen by repeating an assertion that the Nazi gas chambers were a "detail of history" and following that up with a defense of France's World War II leader Philippe Petain, who collaborated with the Nazis.

Saudi Arabia called on Iran to stop supporting Shiite rebels in Yemen on Sunday but Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal insisted Riyadh was not at war with Tehran.

"Unless Iran thinks it is suddenly become part of Yemen, we are not at war with Iran," he said at a press conference with his French counterpart Laurent Fabius.

Doctors at Lufthansa had recommended that pilot Andreas Lubitz, who is suspected of deliberately crashing a plane in the French Alps, be given psychological treatment after he suffered a bout of depression, a German newspaper reported.

Citing documents found by Germany's air transport authority, the Bild am Sonntag said the doctors wrote that "Lubitz should continue to receive psychological treatment, even though he was deemed fit to fly" by an independent expert in 2009.

A seven-year-old British boy died when he skied over a cliff after straying off piste in the French Alps, emergency services said Saturday.

The boy, who had been on a family skiing holiday in the resort of Flaine in France's Haute Savoie region, is believed to have taken a wrong turn on Friday after asking his mother if he could make the last descent of the day alone.

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Friday that nuclear-armed France must not fall into the hands of the National Front, during an interview on Portuguese TV.

"France has nuclear weapons, it is out of the question that this country falls into the hands of the National Front," said the prime minister, who is on an official visit to Lisbon, in response to a question about the rise of the far right party.