Algerian militants issue video showing killing of kidnapped Frenchman

ALGIERS: Algerian militants have released a video that appears to show them beheading Frenchman Herve Gourdel, who was kidnapped on Sunday, in what the group said was a response to France's action against Islamic State militants in Iraq.

The video shows Gourdel, a 55-year-old tourist from Nice, kneeling with his arms tied behind his back before four masked militants who read out a statement in Arabic criticising France's military intervention.

They then pushed him on his side and held him down. The video does not show the beheading, but a militant holds the head up to the camera.

"This is why the Caliphate Soldiers in Algeria have decided to punish France, by executing this man, and to defend our beloved Islamic State," one of the militants says in the statement he read out.

Just before the militants gave their statement, the Frenchman briefly addressed his family.

Reuters was not able to authenticate the footage and there was no immediate confirmation from the French or Algerian governments.

The Caliphate Soldiers, a splinter group linked to Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, had on Monday published a video claiming responsibility for the abduction and showed the man identifying himself as Gourdel.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had said then that the taking of a French hostage would not deter French participation in a U.S.-led coalition of nations against Islamist State militants.

The kidnapping had come after Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani urged the group's followers to attack citizens of the United States, France and other countries that joined the coalition to destroy the radical group.

France launched its first air strikes targeting Islamic State targets in Iraq on Friday. It has said all must be done to rid the region of the group.

Western diplomats and intelligence sources say they believe there are fewer than 10 Western hostages still held by Islamic State. The group has recently beheaded two Americans, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and one Briton, David Haines, and threatened to kill another Briton, Alan Henning.

The kidnapping was one of the first abductions of a foreigner by militants in Algeria since the North African country ended its decade-long war with Islamist fighters in the 1990s.

Gourdel, a French nature guide and photographer, was taken hostage when militants stopped his vehicle in the remote mountains east of Algiers where he planned a hiking trip.

Algerian troops had been searching the mountains in an area known as the "Triangle of Death" during the bloody days of Algeria's 1990s war with Islamists. Attacks are rarer, but al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and other groups are still active in Algeria.

The Caliphate Soldiers group earlier this month announced it had broken with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, known as AQIM, to back Islamic State, in another illustration of deepening rivalries between Islamic State and al Qaeda's core leadership.

AQIM central region commander Khaled Abu Suleimane, who claimed leadership of the Caliphate Soldiers, is a hardliner who always refused peace agreements with the government and traces his militant roots back to the 1990s war.

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