French hostage beheaded by Algerian militant group

 Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah

Sep24, 2014

An Algerian extremist group linked to the Islamic State has decapitated a French hostage in retaliation for France’s airstrikes against militants , according to a video obtained Wednesday by a U.S.-based terrorism watchdog.

The French national, identified as Herve Gourdel, 55, was kidnapped Sunday while hiking in mountains southeast of the capital Algiers.

A video released by a U.S. terrorism watchdog showed Algerian extremists allied with the Islamic State group decapitating a hostage after France ignored their demand to stop airstrikes in Iraq.

The group, which calls itself Jund al-Khilafah, said after abducting Herve Gourdel on Sunday that he would be killed within 24 hours unless France ended its airstrikes against Islamic State fighters in Iraq.

Gourdel is then shown kneeling in a grey T-shirt before four hooded militants, two of them bearing assault rifles while another reads out a message in Arabic denouncing French military operations in Iraq, Algeria and Mali.

"Herve Gourdel is dead because he is the representative of a people ours that defends human dignity against barbarity," Hollande said, speaking along the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York. "My determination is total and this attack only reinforces it. We will continue to fight terrorism everywhere."

France has joined the US in carrying out air strikes against the IS group, which has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria. On September 19, French fighter jets bombed a fuel and weapons depot outside the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

The video followed the staggered release of three videos over the past month showing the decapitations of the American journalists James Foley and Steven J. Sotloff and of a British aid worker, David Cawthorne Haines.

Sources
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2014/09/24/watchdog-algerian-militant-group-linked-to-isis-kills-french-hostage/

www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/world/africa/herve-gourdel-french-hostage-beheaded-algeria.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/french-hostage-reportedly-beheaded-in-algeria/

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