PARIS — An Al Qaeda-affiliated group is accusing France of endangering the lives of a half-dozen French hostages by helping to organize a military intervention in Mali instead of negotiating for the hostages’ release.

The accusation, in an online video, came from Abdel Hamid Abu Zeid, an Algerian who leads the most active of three squads of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist group’s affiliate in the Sahel region of northern Africa.