China has confirmed the murder of a Chinese hostage by Islamic State in Syria and promised to “bring to justice” those responsible.

In a brief statement, the foreign ministry expressed deep condolences to the family of the man who was “cruelly killed”, and confirmed his identity for the first time, naming him as Fan Jinghui.

According to the statement, the Chinese government made “all-out efforts to rescue” Fan after learning about his kidnapping.

“However, with no regard for human conscience and moral baseline, the terrorist organisation still carried out this cold-blooded and violent action,” the statement read.

“The Chinese government strongly condemns this inhuman action and will definitely hold the perpetrators accountable.”

Speaking in Manila, China’s president, Xi Jinping, strongly condemned the extremist group’s killing, and offered his condolences to Fan’s relatives.

“Terrorism is the enemy of all human beings,” he said. “China firmly opposes all kinds of terrorist ideology and will resolutely fight any criminal terrorist activity that challenges the baseline of humanity.”

On Wednesday the militant group said it had executed two hostages, one Chinese and one Norwegian after earlier demanding ransoms for the two men.

The latest issue of the group’s in-house magazine featured images purporting to show the two men shot to death. The extremist group said it had been “executed after being abandoned by kafir nations and organisations”.

But despite the official announcement, Chinese censors have stepped up efforts to scrub detailed reports about the murder from Chinese media.

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.

Earlier, the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Solberg, said it had no reason to doubt Isis had murdered one of its citizens, held hostage in Syria.

She called the killing of Ole Johan Grimsgaard-Ofstad, 48, “painful for the whole country” but but stated that it did not pay ransoms.