He was targeted because after his group kidnapped French hiker Herve Gourdel in the Djurdjura mountains in September he was the person who beheaded the prisoner. Before being beheaded, Gourdel was forced to ask France to not continue the air strikes against ISIS. Gouri , a former al Qaida commander ,was killed in a late-night operation in the town of Isser by The Algerian army which carried out a massive operation. Algerian forces have killed 110 militants in 2014, according to a military source. Gouri was a member of the Armed Islamic Group, known by its French initials GIA – the most extreme of Algeria’s Islamist guerrillas in the civil war. The small group Jund al-Khilafah has only been in existence for a couple of months,” said Algerian security analyst Anis Rahmani. He expressed also the opinion that “killing its chief will affect the morale of the militants.”
