Al-Qaeda says French hostage executed in Mali

The French government was scrambling Wednesday to verify a claim by Al-Qaeda's north African branch that it has executed a French hostage in Mali as a "spy".

A man claiming to be a spokesman for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) told Mauritania's ANI news agency late Tuesday that Philippe Verdon had been executed on March 10 "in response to France's intervention in Northern Mali".

"The French President (Francois) Hollande is responsible for the lives of the other French hostages," the spokesman warned.

A French foreign ministry spokesman said Paris was trying to verify the report, adding that "we don't know at the moment" whether it was reliable.

In all 15 French nationals, including Verdon, are being held captive in Africa, with AQIM claiming responsibility for six of the kidnappings.

Verdon was seized on the night of November 24, 2011 along with Serge Lazarevic from their hotel in Hombori, northeastern Mali, while they were on a business trip, Daily Star reports.

On Tuesday the French army announced that 15 Islamist fighters had been killed in recent days in the northern Mali region of Gao, with the seizure of a large cache of arms and ammunition.

The AQIM source cited by the Mauritanian news agency refused to confirm reports that top Islamist rebels, Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abdelhamid Abou Zeid, had been killed in Mali earlier this month.

France has been carrying out DNA tests to determine whether the militant leaders are among those killed in recent fighting in Mali.