British supporters of Germany's PEGIDA movement, which protests against what it calls the "Islamization" of Europe, are planning their first demonstration on February 28, police said on Friday.

A Facebook group calling itself PEGIDA UK, which has the slogan "United Against Extremism", has called for a march to take place in the northeastern English city of Newcastle.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel next week is to visit France for talks with President Francois Hollande and the Vatican, where she will meet Pope Francis, Berlin said Friday.

In her lunch meeting with Hollande on February 20, Merkel plans to discuss the crises in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq and the major themes of this year's G7 summit in Germany, her spokesman said.

Fighting raged in Ukraine on Friday as the clock ticked down to a ceasefire that will be a first test of the commitment by Kiev and pro-Russian separatists to a freshly-inked peace plan.

At least 27 civilians and soldiers died in shelling as German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Russia it risked fresh sanctions if the fighting did not stop.

Inflation in Germany, Europe's biggest economy, dipped into negative territory in January for the first time in five years, largely due to lower energy prices, data showed on Thursday.

The annual rate of inflation in Germany stood at -0.4 percent last month, the federal statistics office, Destatis, calculated in final data.

The leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France on Wednesday began a crunch peace summit in Minsk aimed at ending 10 months of fighting in Ukraine where violence claimed dozens more lives. 

A grave-looking Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko shook hands briefly with Russian leader Vladimir Putin as the two arch-foes came face-to-face for the first time since October to try to thrash out a peace plan.   

Prime Minister Tammam Salam has said that he received French assurances that Paris is continuing to exert efforts to end Lebanon’s presidential deadlock.

He told As Safir daily on Wednesday that he held around 14 meetings with Arab and Western officials in Germany last week “to prove Lebanon's presence on the international scene and shed light on the problems that it is suffering from.”

Ambassador Ali Awadh Asiri stressed on Wednesday that the Saudi embassy in Beirut increased its measures to avert any possible security threats.

“We have taken all the necessary precautions and the Lebanese state, according to norms, is responsible for the security of the embassy,” Asiri said in comments published in the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat.

Intense fighting in Ukraine, including a devastating rocket strike on Kiev's military headquarters in the east, killed at least 37 people on Tuesday on the eve of a four-way peace summit.

As diplomats scrambled to finalize a deal to end the 10-month war, pro-Russia rebels sought to encircle railway hub Debaltseve and Ukrainian forces launched a counter-offensive around the strategic port of Mariupol.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday warned all sides in the Ukraine conflict against acts of "sabotage", speaking on the eve of a planned Ukraine peace summit in Minsk.

"It wouldn't be the first time that an act of political sabotage, a targeted strike, destroys all hopes of a ceasefire," he said.

The United States added German former rapper Denis Cuspert to its list of "terrorists" over his role as a fighter with the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq, the State Department said Monday.

The 39-year-old, who used to rap in Berlin and now goes by the name Abu Talha al-Almani, is one of the most famous Western fighters for IS. He is already listed as an al-Qaida supporter by the United Nations.