Twin car bombings at an army base and a French-run uranium mine in northern Niger killed at least 10 people Thursday, in unprecedented attacks claimed by an Islamist group fighting French-led troops in neighboring Mali.

The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) claimed the bombings, calling them punishment for Niger's participation in a French-led military offensive against Islamist extremists who had seized control of northern Mali last year and ruled it under a brutal version of Islamic law for some 10 months.

France is to call for the military arm of Hizbullah to be added to an EU terror blacklist due to its backing of the Syrian regime, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Wednesday.

"Because of the decisions that have been taken by Hizbullah and the fact that they are fighting very harshly the Syrian population, we have decided to ask that the military branch of the Hizbullah would be considered as a terrorist organization," Fabius told reporters in English.

Mali's main Tuareg separatist group said Wednesday it supported the holding of a nationwide presidential poll in July but ruled out allowing the army in its northern bastion of Kidal for the vote.

A delegation from the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) held talks in Ouagadougou, the capital of neighboring Burkina Faso, with the region's lead mediator in the Malian crisis, Djibrill Bassole.

French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron Wednesday said they would seek European support for their proposal to arm the Syrian opposition to fight regime forces.

"We are prepared to lift the arms embargo further so that the opposition can present themselves as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people," Cameron told reporters during a brief stopover in Paris on the way back from Brussels.

France accused the Syrian regime on Wednesday of trying to transfer the ongoing civil war in Syria to neighboring countries, particularly to Lebanon.

"We are very concerned about the violent activities taking place in the northern city of Tripoli,” Spokesperson of the French Foreign Ministry Philippe Lalliot expressed.

In France, there's a brewing debate over whether to speak anglais in universite.

The National Assembly on Wednesday was taking up an education reform bill that would allow public universities to hold some courses — like science or economics classes — in English, a plan that has alarmed language purists and the political far-right alike.

France on Wednesday condemned Iran's disqualification of hundreds of would-be presidential candidates, saying the Iranian people should be allowed to "freely choose" their leaders.

Ahead of the June 14 election to replace Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative-dominated Guardian Council winnowed the candidate field from 686 to eight, all close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Christine Lagarde would not automatically be forced to resign her job as head of the International Monetary Fund if a French court decides to prosecute her in the Bernard Tapie case.

But such a ruling could weaken her as managing director of the Fund, after having led it through four difficult eurozone rescues in her 22 months in the job.

The European Union stands poised to put the military wing of Hizbullah on its list of terrorist organizations after a formal request to blacklist the group was filed by a member state Monday, diplomats said.

The request from Britain formally launches a process to blacklist the group, a move that has long been requested by Israel and which will be discussed in early June, several EU diplomats told Agence France Presse.

Israel has said that a France 2 television report seen worldwide on the death of a Palestinian child in 2000 was "baseless", following an analysis of the raw footage, drawing an angry reaction Monday from the boy's father.

The report, bolstering the Israeli political and military stance on the Mohammed al-Dura affair, comes ahead of a ruling Wednesday in Paris on a defamation case between France 2 reporter Charles Enderlin and Philippe Karsenty, director of watchdog group Media Ratings.