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Islamic State-linked militants in Algeria have beheaded a French hostage captured over the weekend -- having earlier made threats to kill him if France did not stop bombing targets in Iraq.
Herve Gourdel, 55, was captured by the Islamist group Jund al-Khilifa while hiking in the Djurdjura National Park on Sunday.
The video which shows the beheading of Gourdel shows Gourdel on his knees with his hands behind his back, surrounded by four armed and masked militants. One of the jihadis reads a speech in Arabic in which he denounces the intervention of the ‘French criminal crusaders’ against Muslims in Algeria, Mali and Iraq.
The group, which has pledged allegiance to IS, abducted Gourdel on Sunday while he was hiking with Algerian friends in the mountainous north eastern region of Kabylie, and a day later gave France a 24-hour deadline to stop the air strikes which it began last week.
Gourdel was beheaded just 30 minutes after US President Barack Obama urged the world to come together to tackle the threat posed by IS and ‘dismantle this network of death’ at the United Nations assembly in New York.
Hours after the video surfaced, French President Francois Hollande affirmed that Herve Gourdel was seized and “cowardly and cruelly murdered”.
“This assassination will reinforce our determination to continue fighting terrorism everywhere. We will continue the combat against IS. Military airstrikes will therefore continue,” Hollande stressed.