Basques from Spain and France on Saturday formally launched a new pro-independence party, Sortu, born from the ashes of Batasuna which was outlawed for links to armed separatists ETA.

About 300 delegates from the Basque regions of Spain and France elected leaders for the left-wing party at a congress in the northern Spanish city of Pamplona.

Fresh fighting erupted Saturday in northern Mali between ethnic Tuaregs and an unidentified armed group, security sources told Agence France Presse, the latest violence in the wake of a French-led campaign that drove radical Islamist fighters from major cities.

Tuaregs of the Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) were fighting what one source said "seemed to be Arab fighters" near the northern town of Tessalit, where suicide car bombers killed three people on Friday.

For the first time since she moved from Britain to France 18 years ago, Frances Bucquet is seriously considering taking French citizenship -- and she blames British Prime Minister David Cameron.

English teacher Bucquet is angry at the premier's announcement his government would hold a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union if it wins the next elections.

Five people, including two suicide bombers, died Friday in car bombings in northern Mali, a day after fierce urban battles between French-led forces and Islamists left up to 20 extremists dead, officials said.

Two kamikaze vehicles targeting civilians and members of the ethnic Tuareg rebel group the MNLA exploded near the town of Tessalit, killing three and wounding several others, a security source said.

France's public deficit is set to be worse than expected in 2013 and 2014, veering up to 3.7 percent of output this year and 3.9 percent next year, the European Commission said on Friday.

The figure for this year, when France was due to get back within the EU's ceiling of 3.0 percent of output, is worse than the 3.5 percent previously tipped, and leaves Socialist President Francois Hollande looking for special leeway from Brussels.

Nigerian security forces were in a "massive manhunt" Friday for seven members of a kidnapped French family after Paris said the abductors had likely separated the victims into two groups.

"As long as there are rumors of their cross-border movements, then security agencies must be intensely searching for them," police spokesman Frank Mba told Agence France Presse, adding that there was a "massive manhunt."

The din of machinery mingled with the echo of the 19th century Crimean War when an excavator bucket stumbled upon the yellowed remains of long-dead French soldiers at a construction site in a southern Ukrainian port city.

The haunting find at Sebastopol's Cane Bay beach in December revealed the site of a large cemetery of French soldiers who died in the war against the Russian Empire during the 1854-1856 Crimean War.

Nigerian security forces searched the country's northeast along the border with Cameroon on Thursday in a bid to free a French family kidnapped earlier this week, officials said.

"Intelligence reports have shown that the abductors may be holding their victims ... around the Dikwa area," a security official in the region said on condition of anonymity.

Haiti must offer justice for the victims of abuses committed under the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, better known as "Baby Doc", the U.N.'s human rights chief said Thursday.

As Haiti's court of appeal resumed hearings over the strongman's 15-year rule, U.N. high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay said there was a duty to ensure that abuses do not go unpunished.

The fate of a French family kidnapped in Cameroon remained uncertain Thursday after a Cameroonian minister denied they were free and a French minister backtracked on his claim they had been found alive.

Hopes for the seven members of the family -- a couple, their children aged five, eight, 10 and 12 and an uncle -- were raised when a Cameroonian military source said they had been found safe and well in Nigeria.