The Algerian military has killed the leader of an Algerianterror group that beheaded French hiker Herve
Gourdel earlier this year, the state-run Algeria Press Service reported
Tuesday.
Gouri
Abdelmalek, leader of Jund al Khilafa, and two other militants were killed in
the Algerian city of Isser after the military set an unspecified
"trap," for them, APS reported Tuesday, citing Algeria's defense
ministry. Continue..
The
report of Abdelmalek's death comes roughly three months after Jund al Khilafa
-- a small Islamist group formerly linked to al Qaeda -- published a video
showing the beheading of Gourdel in what the group said was a display of
support to al Qaeda's rival ISIS.
Gourdel,
55, was hiking in central Algeria's Djudjura National Park when he was abducted
in September. Jund al Khilafa, having just declared allegiance to the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), then published a video of Gourdel's beheading on
September 24.
The video
was titled, "A message of blood for the French government." The group
said it was responding to an appeal by ISIS spokesman Muhammad al-Adnani to kill
"the spiteful and filthy French" because of their support for
military action against the group in Iraq.
A video
message showing the execution was designed to resemble beheadings carried out
by ISIS, as were the words of one of the militants, who said: "Let the
French people know that their blood is cheap for their President, and it is the
same as you made the blood of the Muslim women and children cheap in Iraq and
Sham (Syria)."
The
Algerian government called the beheading an act of "criminals," and
French President Francois Hollande said at the time that Algeria's Prime
Minister assured him he would do the utmost to find the killers.
On
Monday, the Algerian army launched its attack in Isser after tracking what it
believed was "a dangerous terrorist group driving a vehicle" in the
city, the Algerian defense ministry said, according to APS. Abdelmalek was
later confirmed as one of the three that the army killed, APS reported Tuesday.
Jund al
Khilafa, which means "Soldiers of the Caliphate," had been a part of
al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Abdelmalek, who was the commander of AQIM's
central region, said in September that his fighters were abandoning AQIM
because of "the certain deviation of the methods of the mother
organization al-Qaeda, and that of the Islamic Maghreb."
Abdelmalek
had been active in a militant Islamist insurgency in Algeria for 14 years.
Gourdel
was just one of the Westerners to be beheaded by an Islamist extremist group
this year. Since mid-August, ISIS has beheaded American journalists Steven
Sotloff and James Foley, British aid worker David Haines, British aid convoy
volunteer Alan Henning, and American aid worker Peter
Kassig.
No comments:
Post a Comment