The European Union now faces the difficult task of dealing with demands to designate Hizbullah as a terrorist organization after Bulgaria announced Tuesday that the Lebanese party was behind a bomb attack in July that killed five Israeli tourists and one Bulgarian.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said in a statement that the EU should “respond robustly to an attack on European soil.”

French and Malian troops clashed with Islamist rebels near the large town of Gao, Paris said Wednesday after reporting that hundreds of insurgents had been killed in a "real war" to reclaim northern Mali.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the extremist rebels, who have been driven from key strongholds which they had controlled in northern Mali for 10 months, struck back at troops with rocket fire on Tuesday.

A French court on Monday upheld a 70,000-euro ($95,000) fine imposed on low-cost airline EasyJet for refusing to allow three wheelchair-bound passengers to board its planes.

The airline had appealed the initial ruling delivered a year ago but the Paris court rejected the bid.

About 1,800 Chadian soldiers have entered the northern Mali city of Kidal to "secure" what was the last stronghold of Islamist rebels, the French defence ministry said on Tuesday.

A ministry official said French forces, now numbering 4,000 in Mali, also took control and were securing the city's airport following paratrooper reinforcements.

The United States has run 30 flights in support of France's efforts in Mali, a U.S. defense spokesman said late Monday.

"As of Sunday (February 3), U.S. Air Force C-17s had completed 30 flights transporting approximately 610 personnel and 760 tons of equipment and supplies. This effort began on January 21," said spokesman Major Rob Firman.

A French tanker has been hijacked off Ivory Coast, port authority officials in the economic capital Abidjan confirmed Monday, after a report that the vessel had been seized by pirates.

"The boat was hijacked in international waters," Alexis Guie, in charge of communication at the port, told Agence France Presse. The International Maritime Bureau earlier said that a French tanker disappeared at the weekend off the west African country, apparently in an act of piracy.

Lawyers for a French consular official who has been charged with raping his three-year-old daughter in India have urged President Francois Hollande to intervene in the high-profile case.

The lawyers, who were due to meet Hollande on Monday, say Pascal Mazurier, who worked in France's consulate in Bangalore, has been the victim of an attempted framing by his estranged Indian wife.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Paris Sunday for talks with President Francois Hollande on issues that will include France's military intervention in Mali, the Syria conflict, and Iran's alleged bid to build a nuclear bomb.

Biden, who made no comment to reporters as he arrived, was to have lunch with Hollande on Monday before leaving for talks in London with British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Thirty French warplanes on Sunday blasted Islamic extremist training and logistics centers in northeast Mali, just hours after President Francois Hollande visited the country, the military said.

Fighter jets, refueling and reconnaissance planes took part in the "major" overnight operation in the Tessalit area north of Kidal, military spokesman Colonel Thierry Burkhard told AFP.

President Francois Hollande arrived in Mali Saturday to push for African troops to replace French forces who led a lightning advance that drove back radical Islamists from the country's desert north.

The French leader's whirlwind tour came as troops worked to secure Kidal, the last bastion of the radicals who seized control last year after a coup, raising fears that an area larger than France could become a safehaven for al-Qaida-linked fighters.