The newspaper headlines in France on Thursday showed the horror felt after the beheading of a French mountain guide at the hands of Algerian jihadists.<br /><br />They read “Barbarity”, “Crime” and “Beheaded for being French.”<br /><br />Fifty five-year-old Hervé Gourdel was on a hiking holiday in Algeria when he was abducted on Saturday. His captors, an Algerian jihadist group linked to ISIL, posted a video of his murder called “Message of Blood for the French government.”<br /><br />President François Hollande has called a crisis meeting of his defence council later on Thursday.<br /><br />In New York, Hollande told the UN France would “never give in to blackmail” and has vowed to continue airstrikes in Iraq.<br /><br />“My determination is total and this aggression strengthened it. We will continue to fight against terrorism everywhere,” he said<br /><br />In the French Alpine village where Gourdel worked as a mountain guide, the flag was at half-mast.<br /><br />One passer-by in Paris spoke for many, saying:“I think it’s cowardly. It’s cowardly, it’s shameful, it’s not right that this sort of thing exists and that we allow it.”<br /><br />France’s interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said:“France is not scared because it must not be afraid. Fear is a feeling that terrorists want to instil and if fear takes hold it will be a victory of terrorists.”<br /><br />Gourdel had previously trained mountain guides in Morocco for many years and was described as someone who knew the Maghreb well and had strong links with it.<br /><br />He leaves behind a wife and two children.
