At least two civilians were wounded on Thursday in an apparent car bombing near a military camp housing French and Chadian troops in restive northern Mali, local officials and security sources told Agence France Presse.

The vehicle "exploded around 500 meters (yards) from the camp occupied by the French and the Chadians," a local official said, with a security source confirming the information.

Jewish organizations said Wednesday that France saw an unprecedented rise in anti-Semitic attacks last year, fueled in part by extremist gunman Mohammed Merah's attack on a Jewish school.

In a report to the government, France's SPCJ Jewish security watchdog said the number of anti-Semitic incidents was up 58 percent last year, with 177 violent acts and 437 threats.

Civil Defense Minister Avi Dichter mocked discussions by the European Union on blacklisting Hizbullah, describing them as a “charade.”

Dichter accused the European countries that reject labeling Hizbullah as a terrorist organization as “unrealistic.”

France on Wednesday urged its citizens to leave northern Cameroon after seven members of a French family were seized in a kidnapping officials suspect was carried out by Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram.

The family -- a couple, their children aged five, eight, 10 and 12 and an uncle -- were snatched in northern Cameroon by six gunmen on three motorbikes on Tuesday and officials said they had been taken across the border into Nigeria.

Phalange Party leader Amin Gemayel is following up the case of Lebanese leftist militant Georges Abdallah, who has been jailed for nearly three decades in France, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Sources close to the party told As Safir newspaper that the Christian leader is following up the case through diplomatic channels based on the “positive” signs that loomed recently.

Seven French tourists, apparently three adults and four children, were kidnapped Tuesday by unidentified men in northern Cameroon, near the border with Nigeria, a source close to the French embassy in Yaounde said.

"Seven French tourists were captured today by men, apparently on motorbikes, in the Cameroonian locality of Dadanga on the frontier with Nigeria," the source said. "Clearly the tourists were returning from the Waza natural park."

The French government will reduce its forecast for growth of the economy this year from 0.8 percent, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Tuesday.

When asked by a journalist on RTL radio if the figure would be 0.2-0.3 percent, Fabius replied that "it's around this figure", having previously recalled that the forecast had first been 1.2 percent, and then 0.8 percent.

French President Francois Hollande begins on Tuesday a one-day visit to Greece to express support for the recession-hit country's recovery efforts.

"The purpose of my visit is to bring France's support for Greece to succeed, and for Europe to advance with (Greece)," Hollande told leading Greek daily Ta Nea on Monday.

A top French defense industry official said Sunday that talks to sell Rafale jet fighters to the UAE were "progressing well", expressing confidence that a deal could be reached with the Gulf state.

"We are confident that by the end we will succeed in selling it" to the United Arab Emirates, Christian Mons-Catoni, chairman of the French defense industries council (CIDEF), told reporters on the sideline of the IDEX defense show.

Bulgaria's foreign minister, Nikolay Mladenov, will brief on Monday his European Union counterparts on the investigation into the deadly attack on Israeli tourists last year, which Sofia blamed on Hizbullah.

But the EU foreign ministers are not likely to take any measure against Hizbullah, including listing it as a terrorist organization, over differences between them.