Al Qaeda says it has beheaded a French hostage

Al Qaeda says it has beheaded a French hostage

Al Qaeda says it has beheaded a French hostage in reprisal for France's military intervention in Mali, according to reports.

Its North African arm claimed responsibility, Mauritania's ANI news agency reported, citing a commander for the group.

Al Qaeda says it has beheaded a French hostage

A French foreign office spokesman said they were trying to verify the report of the killing of Philippe Verdon, who was kidnapped in November 2011, adding that "we don't know at the moment" whether it is reliable.
In a telephone call to the news agency, the group spokesman said Mr Verdon had been beheaded on March 10 "in response to the French military intervention in the north of Mali", ANI reported.
Mr Verdon and another Frenchman were kidnapped from their hotel room in the northern Mali town of Hombori.
Another 14 French hostages are detained in Western Africa, including seven believed to be held in the Sahel region by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its affiliates.
Terror chief Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an AQIM leader and one of the world's most wanted men, had pledged revenge and vowed to attack western targets in Africa after France launched a campaign to help the country's embattled government drive Islamist militants out of northern Mali.
France launched a nine-week assault in January to dislodge the group and other Islamist militants who had hijacked a Tuareg rebellion in Sahel and seized the northern half of the country.
They were driven out from the main cities of Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, after which some 1,600 French and Chadian troops began searching for Islamist rebels in their pocket hideouts in the mountainous region of northern Mali.
Mr Verdon was described as a French spy by the AQIM commander, who said France's President Francois Hollande "bore the responsibility for the remaining hostages".
When asked by the ANI news agency whether Belmokhtar had been killed, he neither denied nor confirmed it.
There have been conflicting reports on whether he was killed in the French military campaign against the rebels.
Soldiers from Chad fighting Islamists in Mali had claimed to have killed Belmokhtar, who is said to have been the mastermind behind the recent Algerian hostage crisis at a remote gas facility in the Algerian desert.
The one-eyed gangster, nicknamed Mr Marlboro because of his involvement in cigarette smuggling, had also been dubbed "The Uncatchable" by French intelligence after being linked to a series of kidnappings of foreigners in north Africa over the past decade.