PARIS, September 23 (RIA Novosti) – France will not cease its participation in the US-led military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in the Middle East, despite the kidnapping of a French national by jihadists in Algeria, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls told Radio Europe 1 on Tuesday.
"France is a great nation, which totally assumes its responsibilities," Valls said in the interview, answering the question on whether Paris would continue carrying out anti-IS airstrikes in Iraq, regardless of the death threat faced by a kidnapped Frenchman in Algeria.
The prime minister also underscored that there would be no negotiations with the terrorists in any case.
On a Sunday night, French tourist Herve Gourdel, 55, was kidnapped in Algeria's Kabylie Region. The next day, Algerian insurgent group Jund al-Khalifa, which had pledged allegiance to the IS, released a video showing the man, flanked by armed militants, asking French President Francois Hollande to end its airstrikes in Iraq, failing which he would be killed.
The footage has been confirmed as authentic by French Foreign Ministry, with France and Algeria trying to liberate the kidnapped citizen.
The IS Sunni fundamentalist group has seized vast areas across Syria and Iraq and proclaimed a caliphate on the territories it controls. The extremists' advance on northern Iraq made Washington resort to airstrikes in August.
France joined the attacks on September 19, following US President Barack Obama's announcement of a broad international coalition to counter the IS.
