Algeria and Niger are set to "pool" their resources to tackle the rising threat posed by jihadist groups in the Sahel region, Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou said on Monday. 

"We have agreed to mobilize and pool our operational capabilities and intelligence to deal with terrorist threats and criminal organizations," Issoufou said in Algiers after a meeting with Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Bouteflika. 

The body of a French tourist who was kidnapped and beheaded by jihadists in Algeria last September was flown to Paris after a brief ceremony in Algiers on Monday.

Herve Gourdel's headless corpse was found in a booby-trapped grave in the mountainous Kabylie region, east of the capital, on January 15 after a months-long search involving some 3,000 Algerian troops. His head was found in a separate grave.

Moroccan authorities have arrested an Algerian national thought to be a member of Jund al-Khilafa, a jihadist group responsible for the September beheading of a French tourist, authorities said Sunday.  

The operation was carried out by police near the border town of Ahfir, about 30 kilometers north of Oujda, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry, which did not give a date for the arrest. 

The body of a French tourist who was kidnapped and beheaded by jihadists in Algeria last September is to be flown home on Monday, a source close to the case told Agence France Presse.

DNA tests have confirmed that the headless corpse found in a booby-trapped grave in the mountainous Kabylie region, east of Algiers, on January 15 was that of Herve Gourdel, the source said on Sunday.

Algerian soldiers discovered a cache of explosive vests and ammunition in the east of the country near where jihadists beheaded a French hostage in September, the defense ministry said Saturday.

"In the framework of the anti-terrorist fight and a search operation near Iboudrarene (150 kilometers or 90 miles east of Algiers), the army... on Friday uncovered and destroyed on site five explosive vests, six homemade bombs" and ammunition, it said.

Assailants lobbed explosives at Algeria's embassy in the Libyan capital Saturday, wounding three people, a security official said, in an attack claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group.

The IS Libya branch said "soldiers of the caliphate" attacked the empty mission in a message posted on Twitter, together with a photograph of a tree-lined street with a fire in the background.

Algerian troops found the body of French tourist Herve Gourdel, security sources said Thursday, months after he was beheaded by 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.  

Twelve suspected members of a "terrorist cell" planning attacks in Algeria have been arrested in the south of the country, the defense ministry announced Wednesday.

It said the arrests were carried out during the past two weeks in army operations in Ghardaia, Laghouat and In Amenas, all several hundred kilometers (miles) from the capital Algiers.

OPEC is divided on how to respond to plunging crude oil prices with no plan for an emergency meeting in the next few weeks, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said Tuesday.

At a meeting of the cartel in November, Venezuela unsuccessfully lobbied fellow members to tighten the taps to stem the fall in oil prices.

The two brothers who killed 12 people at French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo had no links with Algeria, Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra said Sunday.

"They were never interested in obtaining Algerian papers, even if their father had at one time," Lamamra, told French radio station RFI.