jihadists demanding that France halt air strikes against the Islamic State group.
The body was found buried
without its head in Akbil, where Gourdel was abducted by the Jund
al-Khilafa (Soldiers of the Caliphate) group, the sources said.
The
army had mobilised 3,000 troops to find the 55-year-old mountain
guide's body and launched a new search operation on Wednesday.
Excavations
were carried out in Akbil and the neighbouring town of Abu Youssef
following a tip-off by an Islamist detainee, a security source told AFP.
The search was headed by an elite army unit and aided by sniffer dogs.
Police
experts arrived at the burial site, located in a forested area known as
Tabounecht Abu Youssef, that had been rigged with explosives, which a
local resident said was aimed at "causing casualties among the
searchers."
The military had to bring in munitions experts to sweep the area first, the source said.
Forensic
experts were present to perform tests to formally identify the body,
which was exhumed in the presence of Algeria's senior terrorism
prosecutor and the judge presiding over Gourdel's case.
Gourdel
was abducted by Jund al-Khilafa on September 21, while hiking in a
national park that was once a draw for tourists but became a sanctuary
for Islamists.
He was
beheaded days later in a video posted online after France rejected the
jihadists' demand to halt air strikes against the Islamic State group in
Iraq and Syria.
Jund al-Khilafa had earlier pledged allegiance to IS.
In December, the army said it had killed the leader of the militants who beheaded Gourdel.
The
body of Abdelmalek Gouri, who claimed responsibility for the
Frenchman's killing, was identified after an operation in which two
other suspected militants were killed in Isser, about 60 kilometres (40
miles) east of Algiers.
An Algerian court has also launched legal proceedings against 15 people suspected of participating in the beheading.
Gourdel's
death followed calls by IS for Muslims to kill Westerners whose nations
have joined a campaign to battle the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria.
Violence
involving armed Islamists in Algeria has fallen considerably since the
civil war of the 1990s, but groups linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb continue to launch attacks in the northeast, mostly on security
forces.
Gouri, alias Khaled Abou Souleimane, was the former
right-hand man of AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel, and is suspected of
helping to organise suicide attacks on the government palace and against
a UN contingent in Algiers in 2007.
He
is also thought to have masterminded an April attack that killed 11
soldiers in Iboudrarene, the same region where Gourdel was kidnapped.
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