Jund al-Khalifa ISIS affiliated group beheads kidnapped Frenchman in Algeria

Jund al-Khalifa ISIS affiliated group beheads kidnapped Frenchman, Hervé Gourdel in Algeria

An Algerian jihadist group Jund al-Khalifa today released a video claiming to have beheaded a French national, Hervé Gourdel, abducted in northeastern Algeria on Sunday. The beheading marks the first time an IS-linked group has killed a Western national outside the battle zones in Iraq and Syria.

In a grisly decapitation video posted on jihadist sites on Wednesday, Jund al-Khalifa militants said they killed Gourdel because France failed to respond to a 24-hour deadline to stop its military assault on the IS group in Iraq. The four-minute video begins with
footage of Hollande announcing French strikes against IS targets in Iraq before cutting to clips of air strikes. The footage then fades to black before the title, “Message in Blood to the French Government” appears in French and Arabic. 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.

Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountaineering guide from the southern French city of Nice, was kidnapped by the IS-linked Algerian jihadist group Jund al-Khalifa while he was hiking in the mountainous Tizi Ouzou area, a day after ISIS called on all Muslims to wage war on American and French nationals wherever they are.

French President François Hollande on Wednesday confirmed the “cruel and cowardly” killing of a Frenchman kidnapped in Algeria by an Islamic State-linked group. Hollande’s confirmation came hours after the release of the video. Speaking in New York, where he is attending the UN General Assembly meeting, Hollande said France would continue its military operations against the Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq. Denouncing the beheading, Hollande said the killing “reinforces” his determination to combat terrorism. “France will never give in to terrorism because it is our duty and above all, it is our honour,” said Hollande.

The Jund al-Khalifa fi Ard al-Jazayer – variously translated as the “Soldiers of the Caliphate in Algeria” or “Caliphate Soldiers of Algeria” – emerged earlier this month, when a regional commander of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) released a statement announcing that he had broken away from al Qaeda and had sworn loyalty to IS group. In a video posted on jihadist sites on Monday night, Jund al-Khalifa announced Gourdel’s kidnapping. The video was released just hours after the Islamic State group issued an audio statement calling on Muslims worldwide to kill citizens of nations that have joined the fight against the jihadist group in Iraq. In a nearly 42-minute audio statement released online late Sunday, Islamic State group spokesman Abu Mohammed al-Adnani had 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 the jihadists. 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.

-Culled from France 24