France has "information" but no firm proof that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime is still using chemical weapons, President Francois Hollande said Sunday.

"We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof," Hollande said in a radio interview after he was asked about reports that Assad was currently using chemical weapons.

"What I do know is what we have seen from this regime is the horrific methods it is capable of using and the rejection of any political transition," he told the Europe 1 radio station.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told the same radio station there were "indications, which have yet to be verified, that there have been recent chemical attacks."

He said they were "much less significant than those in Damascus a few months ago but very deadly," and had taken place in the northwest of the country, near the Lebanese border.

A French source close to the matter told AFP that the reports "had come from different sources, including the Syrian opposition."

There are conflicting accounts about one attack that happened in the town of Kafr Zita in the central Hama province earlier in April, with both the government and the opposition accusing each other of being responsible.

Activists in the area accused the regime of using chlorine gas, saying it caused "more than 100 cases of suffocation."

AFP