Several thousand Muslim supporters of the Central African Republic's former rebel group Seleka protested Sunday against French troops conducting a disarmament operation.

The demonstration in the capital Bangui marked the most significant show of hostility towards France since it deployed troops on December 5 to end the chaos that followed Seleka's coup in March.

European Union leaders hailed France's intervention in the Central African Republic on Friday and promised a decision on a possible EU support mission in January.

"This is the second time in a year that France has courageously taken the lead in a serious crisis," EU President Herman Van Rompuy said, referring to French intervention in Mali early this year.

Poland said Friday it would send a manned military transport aircraft to back French troops in the Central African Republic in February.

"We will give France logistical support with a military transport aircraft and service crew," of 50 soldiers starting on February 1, 2014 for three months," Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said on his official Twitter feed.

France on Friday said indiscriminate air strikes by Syrian government forces on the city of Aleppo amounted to war crimes and called for a halt to such attacks.

The Doctors Without Borders medical charity says at least 189 people have been killed and nearly 900 wounded in the Aleppo bombings since Sunday, which come ahead of scheduled peace talks in Geneva next month.

Nine people have been killed in sectarian fighting in northern Yemen between Shiite Huthi rebels and Sunni Islamists backed by local tribes, a tribal source said Friday.

Huthi rebels have been battling the Sanaa government for nearly a decade in the remote Saada province, but the outbreak of fighting with Sunni militants has deepened the sectarian dimension of the unrest.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday signed a decree granting a pardon to Russia's former richest man and bitter Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, allowing his release after more than a decade in prison.

In a shock remark after his annual marathon news conference on Thursday, Putin had said that Russia's most famous prisoner had asked for clemency on humanitarian grounds as his mother was ill.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far-right National Front (FN) party, was fined 5,000 euros ($6,800) Thursday for accusing Roma of stealing "naturally".

A Paris court ruled the 85-year-old Le Pen, now honorary president of the FN, was guilty of publicly insulting a group of people based on their ethnicity after comments he made about the Roma at a rally in September last year.

Germany and Britain are providing logistical support to a military force in the Central African Republic, a French minister said Wednesday, amending comments made earlier indicating they were considering sending troops.

Speaking on RTL radio earlier Wednesday, European Affairs Minister Thierry Repentin said that Belgium could send troops at the end of January to prop up a 1,600-strong French force attempting to quell deadly sectarian violence in Central Africa.

Ailing President Abdelaziz Bouteflika is "well-informed" of developments in Algeria, despite having been largely unseen for months because of health woes, French premier Jean-Marc Ayrault said Tuesday after meeting him.

The 76-year-old president, in power since 1999, returned home in July after nearly three months in France recovering from a mini-stroke.

President Michel Suleiman contacted on Tuesday French President Francois Hollande to stress Lebanon's commitment to fighting terrorism, most notably in light of Tuesday's blast in the Bekaa region of Baalbek, reported the National News Agency.

Suleiman urged the Lebanese people “to exercise diligence against the repeated attempts to spread violence and terrorism to Lebanon.”