The Algerian army said on Tuesday that
it has killed the head of the jihadist Jund al-Khilafa group that
decapitated a Frenchman in September.
The
body of Abdelmalek Gouri, who claimed responsibility for the beheading
of Frenchman Herve Gourdel, was identified after an operation in the
town of Isser "that allowed us to eliminate three terrorists," the army
said.
The confirmation of
Gouri's death came after the Nahar private television network said
soldiers had killed him and two other militants late on Monday in Isser,
about 60 kilometres (37 miles) east of Algiers.
A picture of 55-year old French tourist and
moutain-guide Herve Gourdel, who was kidnapped on September 21 while
hiking in Algeria's Djurdjura National Park, some 80 kilometres south of
Tizi Ouzou, and beheaded three days later ©Farouk Batiche (AFP/File)
Jund al-Khilafa, or "Soldiers of
the Caliphate", beheaded Gourdel on September 24 in a gruesome video
posted online after France rejected their demand to halt air strikes in
Iraq.
On Saturday, the army
said it killed three other Islamist gunmen in a mountainous area near
Sidi Daoud, and that one of them was a "dangerous criminal" wanted since
1995.
Soldiers seized a large quantity of guns, ammunition and explosives during the operation.
On
December 11, Algerian Justice Minister Tayeb Louh announced that
soldiers had killed two members of Jund al-Khilafa implicated in the
murder of Gourdel.
Gourdel, a
55-year-old mountain guide, was kidnapped in September while hiking in a
national park that was once a draw for tourists but became a sanctuary
for Islamists.
He was later
beheaded by Jund al-Khilafa, which was formed at the end of August after
splintering from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and pledging
allegiance to IS.
His
killing followed calls by IS for Muslims to kill Westerners whose
nations have joined a campaign to battle the jihadist group in Iraq and
Syria.
Violence involving
armed Islamists has fallen considerably since the civil war of the
1990s, but groups linked to AQIM continue to launch attacks in the
northeast, mostly on security forces.
Algerian army troops carried out search
operations in the mountainous eastern Tizi Ouzou region September 23,
2014, to find French hiker Herve Gourdel who was kidnapped and later
beheaded by militants linked to the Islamic State group
©Farouk Batiche
(AFP/File)