‘Algerian jihadists linked to Islamic State militants have claimed in a video to have beheaded a French tourist abducted on Sunday, the SITE jihadists monitoring service has reported.
In the online video, the Algerian militants who call themselves Jund al-Khilafah, or Soldiers of the Caliphate, behead French citizen Herve Gourdel.
The group abducted Gourdel on Sunday and said that he would be killed within 24 hours unless France ended its military action against IS in Iraq.
Earlier, France confirmed the authenticity of the video released by the group Monday. However, Paris said that the terrorist group’s threats will not change France’s position.
Gourdel, 55, a mountaineering guide from Nice, was abducted in the Kabylie region of northeast Algeria while hiking with two friends Sunday, Algerian security officials said. The group of tourists had spent the night at a ski lodge near the town of Tikdjda, 65 miles from the capital, Algiers.
The kidnapping occurred after Islamic State called on its supporters to attack citizens from Western countries joining the US-led coalition against the jihadist movement.
On Sunday, IS released a 42-minute audio statement in which its spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, called on followers to “kill a disbelieving American or European – especially the spiteful and filthy French – or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war” against IS.
The terrorists have already beheaded two American journalists and a British aid worker.’
Report by RT (source link)
Niamh Harris