President Xi Jinping Condemns Killing of Chinese Hostage by Islamic State

The Islamic State said it had killed the two men, identified as Chinese national Fan Jinghui and Norwegian citizen Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad in its English-language online magazine “Dabiq”.

A Norwegian man held in Syria by Islamic State has most likely been killed by his hostage takers, Prime Minister Erna Solberg told a news conference on Wednesday, following reports by an online IS publication of his execution.

Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Børge Brende said the mutilation of prisoners to collect ransom was showing the real face of ISIL.

China’s president has strongly condemned the killing of a Chinese hostage by Islamic State, saying the group is an enemy of mankind.

President Xi Jinping strongly condemned the “cruel murder” of Fan Jinghui, labelling terrorism humanity’s common enemy.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a statement China had noted the report and is “deeply shocked”.

In September, the two men were pictured in the Dabiq magazine wearing yellow jumpsuits with the words “FOR SALE” below their portraits, RT reported. We express our condolences to the victim and sympathy to his family.

Fan, a Beijing native, once ran an advertisement company in the Chinese capital and had become a freelance consultant, according to the Beijing News.

China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that the government had made “all-out efforts” to rescue Fan.

On Thursday morning, “Chinese hostage” was the sixth most searched term on Weibo, China’s Twitter, but evidence from Free Weibo, a website that captures deleted social media posts, shows many posts have been deleted.

The hostages were reportedly executed after their countries and families failed to pay the ransom, which ISIS had demanded for their release.

Those deaths and the shootings and suicide bombings in Paris were claimed by the Islamic State group, which declared a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria a year ago.

In the same magazine, ISIL also published a photo of what it said was the bomb that brought down the Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula last month, killing all 224 people on board. Beijing says the Syrians themselves need to arrive at a political solution.