The Frenchman, Herve Gourdel, was a 55-year-old mountainerring guide from the southern French city of Nice, who was kidnapped on Sunday by Jund al-Khilifa (Soldiers of the Caliphate), in the Kabylie region of northeast Algeria while hiking with two friends. Algerian authorities 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 ISIS called on its supporters to attack citizens from Western countries joining the US-led coalition against the jihadist movement.
Jund al-Khilifa had demanded that France stopped its air strikes against IS in Iraq and had given a 24-hour deadline. The ultimatum was issued via a video on Monday.
French President Francois Hollande confirmed the killing in an address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.
Hollande said: “Today I am speaking before you with a particularly high level of emotion because one of my compatriots has just been the subject of a cowardly assassination in Algeria. He was abducted and he was beheaded. This is what terrorism does.”
He went on to say that terrorists also kill Muslims and minorities. “They rape. They kill. It is for this reason that the fight that the international community needs to wage against terrorism knows no borders,” he said.
French forces joined the U.S. in executing airstrikes on September 19 against ISIS which has overrun parts of Syria and Iraq.
The Jund al-Khilifa, a splinter group of al-Qaeda, pledge allegiance to the leader of ISIS, which recently beheaded two Americans, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and a Briton, David Haines. The life of another Briton, Alan Henning is also on the line.
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