Around a dozen French tanks deployed Wednesday at Bangui's airport as intense gunfire in adjoining neighborhoods sowed panic among residents.

The tanks took positions at the entrance to the airport, where French and African peacekeepers are based, after automatic weapons fire and explosions shook several parts of the city.

French authorities have given permission for a new Russian Orthodox church to be built near the Eiffel Tower, a project that has been blocked since 2010, the Russian embassy said Wednesday.

The plan for the church dates back to 2007 when Alexy II, the now deceased patriarch of Moscow, visited France and said the Russian Orthodox church wanted a bigger edifice in Paris.

Gale-force winds and pounding rain Tuesday lashed Britain and France, killing at least four people, disrupting Christmas travel and leaving tens of thousands without power.

In Britain, two people died in pre-Christmas storms and there were two other deaths in car accidents linked to bad weather.

Helping Lebanon overcome the burden of Syrian refugees and supporting the stability of its state institutions are two main issues that will be on the agenda of high-level talks between French and Saudi leaders over the weekend, officials said.

The French officials told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat on Tuesday that French President Francois Hollande is expected to discuss with Saudi King Abdullah Lebanon's political crisis.

High winds and heavy rain battered parts of Europe on Monday, leaving at least two people dead and one man lost at sea off France, and disrupting travel two days from Christmas.

In Britain, a man was found dead in a swollen river in northwest England where the water was "fast flowing, and a lot more water than normal", said Inspector Chis Wright of the Cumbria police, adding: "It's fair to say that the weather contributed to the problem."

France's interior minister said Monday that a controversy over a joke made by French President Francois Hollande suggesting that Algeria was unsafe, which sparked a diplomatic row with Algiers, "was behind us".

The controversy erupted after Hollande joked during a speech last week to the CRIF Jewish representative group that French Interior Minister Manuel Valls had just returned "safe and sound" from a trip to Algeria, and "that's already a lot."

Three ex-rebels shot dead by French troops in the capital of the Central African Republic on Sunday were members of the presidential guard and were "killed in cold blood," the CAR presidency said.

"They were killed in cold blood by members of Sangaris," presidential spokesman Guy Simplice Kodegue said on Monday, referring to the French force sent this month to disarm ex-rebels sowing chaos in the country.

African Union troops early on Monday fired on demonstrators protesting against the president of the strife-torn Central African Republic, killing at least one person, according to Agence France Presse reporters on the scene.

Several hundred Christian demonstrators crowded at the entrance to the airport in Bangui, calling for the departure of President Michel Djotodia, who became the first Muslim leader of the majority Christian nation after a March coup that unleashed waves of violence in the country.

A man and a woman were shot dead at a Paris bar on Sunday evening by a gunman who then fled on foot, police said, labeling the crime as "mysterious".

The two were shot at point-blank range with one bullet each as they were in the outside terrace of the bar in a residential part of the French capital's southern 14th arrondissement, or district.

French President Francois Hollande on Sunday expressed his "sincere regrets" over a joke he made suggesting Algeria was unsafe, drawing a line under a brief but fiery diplomatic spat with the north African country.

Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra initially called the quip "regrettable" and said it ended the year on a "bad note", but later declared himself satisfied with Hollande's apology.