An Algerian group linked to Islamic State jihadists threatened to kill a French hostage within 24 hours unless Paris halts air strikes on the IS in Iraq, in a video posted Monday.
Jund al-Khilifa (Soldiers of the Caliphate), which has pledged allegiance to IS, said in the video that it carried out Sunday's kidnapping of the Frenchman in a mountainous region of eastern Algeria where Al-Qaeda is active.
The hostage, Herve Pierre Gourdel,
55, white-haired and bespectacled, is shown squatting on the ground flanked by
two hooded men clutching Kalashnikov assault rifles, as he asks for French President
Francois Hollande to intervene.
Gourdel says he is a native of Nice
in southern France who works as a mountain guide, and that he only arrived in
Algeria on Saturday. He was seized while hiking with Algerian friends.
In the video, the kidnappers say
they are responding to a call from IS, posted just hours earlier, for Muslims
to kill citizens of countries taking part in the U.S.-led coalition against the
jihadists who have seized of large swathes of Iraq and Syria.
France mounted its first air strike
to beat back the IS in Iraq on Friday, joining an aerial assault which the
United States launched on August 8.
The French foreign ministry
confirmed a national had been kidnapped during a visit to the Tizi Ouzou
region.
