France’s president Francois Hollande said at the United Nation that Herve Gourdel’s killing was a “cowardly assassination.
“France has announced it will tighten security around transport and public places following the killing of a French hostage by jihadists in Algeria” and that it will “boost its support for Syrian opposition forces fighting Islamic State (IS) militants,” the BBC reported.
The group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah (Soldiers of the Caliphate) released a video titled “A message in blood to the French government” that showed the beheading of the 55-year-old mountaineering guide, from Nice.
It begins with a clip of French President Francois Hollande before showing Gourdel on his knees with his hands behind his back, surrounded by four masked gunmen.
One of the terrorists reads a speech in Arabic in which he denounces the intervention of the “French criminal crusaders” against Muslims in Algeria, Mali and Iraq.
The Frenchman had told his family that he loved them just before the militants made their statement.
The group abducted Gourdel on Sunday while he was hiking with Algerian friends in the mountainous Northeastern region of Kabylie, and a day later gave France a 24-hour deadline to stop the airstrikes which it began last week.
