Algerian Islamic extremists behead French hostage

ALGIERS, Algeria - An Algerian splinter group from al-Qaeda has beheaded a French hostage over France's airstrikes on Islamic State fighters, in a sign of a possible widening of the crisis.

The killing of Herve Gourdel, a mountaineer kidnapped while hiking in Algeria, was a "cowardly assassination," French President Francois Hollande said Wednesday, but he vowed to continue the strikes.

"Herve Gourdel is dead because he is the representative of a people - ours - that defends human dignity against barbarity," Hollande said on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.

On Friday, France joined the United States in conducting airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq. Two days later, the Islamic State called on Muslims to attack foreign targets.

Gourdel, 55, a mountaineering guide from Nice, was seized Sunday in northern Algeria. His Algerian companions were freed.

A group calling itself Jund al-Khilafah, or "Soldiers of the Caliphate," split from al-Qaeda and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State two weeks ago. It seized Gourdel in response to the call to kill the "spiteful and filthy French." It gave France 24 hours to end its air campaign.

A video online showed masked gunmen standing over a kneeling Gourdel. They pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said they were fighting his enemies. The video showed the captive pushed to the ground and blindfolded before he was beheaded.

The video was similar to those from the Islamic State, which has killed two American journalists and a British aid worker.

"It is not the first time France has been affected by terrorist acts," Hollande told a session of the U.N. Security Council chaired by President Obama. "And we have never given in. Every time, we come out of these things more robust."

Obama said the world had been "horrified by another brutal murder."

Gourdel's killing may push Algeria's military to push harder against extremists. It has sent thousands of troops and helicopters into the mountains.