A road sign is seen at the entry of Champigny-sur-Marne, East of Paris.
A road sign is seen at the entry of Champigny-sur-Marne, East of Paris, November 19, 2014. French authorities have identified a second French militant who appears on a beheading video released by Islamic State at the weekend, a state prosecutor said on Wednesday. In a statement, the state prosecutor said that a second Frenchman, Mickael Dos Santos - a 22-year-old convert from a town east of Paris who converted to Islam and left to Syria in August, 2013 - had been identified. Sign in French refers to parking restrictions on streets in the city. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

France identified a second French national in the Islamic State video of the killing of Syrian prisoners. He was named as 22-year-old Mickael Dos Santos.

Another Frenchman was earlier identified as one of the militants in the video. He was a Muslim convert named Maxime Hauchard from Normandy. The second militant in the video is also a convert who hails from south-eastern Paris suburb Champigny sur Marne, BBC reported. American aid worker Abdul-Rahman Kassig's severed head was displayed in the same video where these two were seen. The identified Frenchmen are among around 1,000 French nationals who are believed to have gone to Iraq and Syria to take part in extremist activities.

According to French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, around 50 Frenchmen were killed in Syria. He attended a security meeting at Beauvais before commenting on the number. Valls said it was sad that the authorities were not surprised to know that French nationals were involved in the "barbarity" going on in the Middle East. An earlier video showed a number of armed men burning what seemed to be French passports. Three of the gunmen appealed to French Muslims to leave France and join Islamic States forces to fight "enemies of Allah."

French intelligence identified Dos Santos through an investigation of the recruitment network employing French nationals in Syria for extremist activities. NBC News reported that he, just like Hauchard, had grown up in a regular French family. He later converted to Islam while the conversion process was carried out over the Internet. According to reports, he might have been recruited in 2013. It was the same time when a significant number of Frenchmen went to Syria.

According to one of Dos Santos' friends, his family was surprised to know that he had been converted to Islam all of a sudden. Dos Santos has Portuguese origin while he was born in Champigny-sur-Marne. He was first noticed in October when he released a video on the net that asked all brothers living in France" to "kill any civilian." The killing of random civilians was believed to be a response to the U.S.-led international strike against Islamic State. France is a major part of the mission as one of the active allies.

Contact the writer: s.mukhopadhyay@ibtimes.com.au