We will do all we can to free hostages, but a terrorist group cannot change our position – that’s the message from the French government after the release of a video showing a French holidaymaker kidnapped in Algeria.
The hostage, 55-year-old mountain guide Hervé Gourdel from Nice, was seized on Sunday by a group linked to the Islamic State militants.
The kidnappers say they will kill him unless Paris stops its intervention against militants in Iraq.
The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: “In the face of terrorism, which plays on terror and fear, we have to be especially determined, as France is, fighting against terrorism everywhere. Because terrorism is an affront against our
freedoms and fundamental values.”
The Algerian military has begun searches in the area where the French national was taken, a mountainous region that was once a stronghold for Islamist rebels.
