France to continue Iraq air strikes despite Frenchman’s kidnapping in Algeria
France will not stop its air strikes on the Islamic State armed group or negotiate with the Algerian Islamists who threatened to kill French hostage Hervé Pierre Gourdel within 24 hours in a video message published on Monday evening, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said on Tuesday morning.
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“That’s all the perfidy of terrorism, to resort to blackmail, death and threats,” Valls told Europe 1 radio. “If we give an inch, we hand them a victory.”
A recently formed group called Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) issued a video announcing that it had taken Gourdel, 55, hostage, showing him appealing to President François Hollande to save him and threatening to kill him within 24 hours if French continued to attack the Islamic State (IS) armed group in Iraq.
The IS earlier called on its allies to kill nationals of countries involved in the coalition of forces against it, especially America and French citizens.
US planes, working with government in the region, for the first time hit IS positions in Syria on Tuesday morning.
The Jund al-Khilafah footage has been confirmed as authentic, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced during a visit to New York along with Hollande.
“It is an extremely serious threat against the life of this man,” he said. “The French and Algerian authorities are doing their best to try and secure his release. But we're very worried. The message from the terrorists confirms their brutality and inhumanity.”
Hollande learned of the kidnapping en route for the US and called Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal from the presidential airplane.
A crisis cell has been set up in the area and, according to Algerian TV channel Echorouk, the army is searching for Gourdel and his kidnappers.
The Frenchman, who was born in the Riviera city of Nice in 1959, is a mountain guide and was on a hike with a group of Algerians near Tizi Ouzou, the main town in the predominantly Berber Kabylia region.
In the video he said he had arrived in the country on 20 September.
The kidnapping is the first of a French national since the end of the war between armed Islamists and the Algerian state in the 1990s.
Who are Jund al-Khilafa?
Jund al-Khilifah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) broke with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) and declared its allegiance to the IS earlier this month.
It is led by Abdelmalek Gouri, alias Khaled Abu Souleimane, formerly Aqim’s emir in the centre of the country, who fell out with Aqim’s leadership in July, following the breach between IS leader Abu Bakhr al-Baghdadi and al-Qaeda.
It is not clear how many members it has.
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