French police stormed a bank in Toulouse on Wednesday, arresting a gunman with psychiatric problems who claimed to be an al-Qaida militant and freeing his two hostages after a seven-hour siege.

The 26-year-old, who had taken four bank employees hostage in the morning in the same area where serial killer Mohamed Merah lived and was shot dead by police in March, was wounded in the stomach in the assault, police sources said.

France on Tuesday voiced concern that Egypt's military appeared to be clinging to power after a pivotal presidential vote and called for a speedy return to democracy.

Egypt's ruling military council announced de facto martial law just after the election, giving the armed forces control over the legislature and state budget.

France denounced a deadly strike on Israel Monday by militants who had sneaked across the Egyptian border and urged restraint by all parties to prevent a spike in tensions.

An Israeli civilian was killed in the ambush, which sparked a firefight that left at least two gunmen dead. It mirrored a strike in August 2011 in which gunmen from Sinai staged ambushes in southern Israel, killing eight.

A suspect was arrested during a massive manhunt early Monday after a man shot dead two female paramilitary gendarmes with one of their own pistols in a village in southeast France.

The gendarmes, aged 29 and 35, were intervening in a dispute on Sunday when a man who had been accused of burglary knocked down one of them, grabbed her gun and killed her, investigators said.

France's Socialists won control of parliament in a run-off vote Sunday, handing President Francois Hollande the convincing majority needed to push through a tough tax-and-spend agenda, estimates said.

The Socialists' bloc obtained between 312 and 326 seats -- an absolute majority in the 577-seat National Assembly -- and so will not need to rely on the Greens or the far left, polling institutes Sofres and CSA said.

The French began voting Sunday in a general election run-off expected to hand Socialist President Francois Hollande a clear parliamentary majority to push his agenda.

Opinion polls released before the end of campaigning at midnight Friday showed Hollande's Socialists and their parliamentary allies on track to take control of France's lower house National Assembly.

Europe should immediately signal its joint will to strengthen the Eurozone, IMF chief Christine Lagarde said Saturday on the eve of Greek elections which are crucial for the future of the monetary union.

"In the very short term, perhaps in less than three months, it is necessary for Europeans, particularly those in the heart of the Eurozone, to give strong signals about their collective will to buttress their monetary union," she told France's Liberation newspaper.

French police have questioned around 100 people and seized their computers as part of a months-long operation to crack down on child pornography, a police source said Friday.

The probe was conducted by police from the northern city of Amiens after they discovered hundreds of child sex photos and videos on a website hosted outside of France.

Segi, an outlawed youth group linked with the armed Basque separatist organization ETA, said Friday it had disbanded.

Segi, which was declared a terrorist group by Spain's Supreme Court in 2007 over its suspected ties to ETA, said it "has ended its course", in a statement published in pro-independence Basque newspaper Gara.

Russia on Friday denied discussing Syrian President Bashar Assad's departure with Western nations and warned it may skip a planned conference on the crisis if Iran is not invited as well.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's comments seemed aimed at quashing reports from several major capitals about a discernible shift in Russia's approach to its Soviet-era ally that acknowledged the nearing end of Assad's regime.