 |
A veteran Islamist militant blamed for a deadly attack on an Algerian
gas field and who ran smuggling routes across North Africa has been killed in a
U.S. air strike inside Libya, Libya's government said on Sunday.
The recognized government said the strike had killed Mokhtar
Belmokhtar, an Algerian militant who became a major figure in insurgencies
across North Africa and the Saharan border region and was dubbed "The
Uncatchable" by the French military.
The U.S. military confirmed Belmokhtar had been targeted in Saturday
night's air strike but did not say if he was killed.
The Pentagon was continuing to assess the results of the operation,
spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said in a statement.
Libya's internationally recognized government, which sits in the
eastern town of Bayda, said the U.S strike had killed Belmokhtar at a gathering
with other militant leaders, who it did not name.
Libyan officials gave no further details about the area of the strike.
But Libyan military sources said an air strike on a farmhouse on Saturday in
Ajdabiya city near Benghazi had killed seven members of the Ansar al Sharia
militant group who had been meeting there.
ELUSIVE 'GANGSTER-JIHADIST'
Belmokhtar earned a reputation as one of the most elusive jihadi
leaders in the region. He has been reported killed several times, including in
2013 when he was believed to have died in fighting in Mali.
If confirmed, the death of Belmokhtar - who was blamed for
orchestrating the 2013 attack on Algeria's In Amenas gas field in which 40 oil
workers died, and for several foreign kidnappings - would be a major strike
against al Qaeda-tied groups in the region.
Once associated with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb's Algerian
leadership, Belmokhtar broke from the group but remained tied to al Qaeda's
central leadership even after forming his own group "Those who sign in
Blood".
The one-eyed veteran of Afghanistan and Algeria's own 1990s Islamist
war had long been a major figure in Saharan smuggling, hostage-taking, arms
trafficking and insurgencies, including the conflict in Mali.
Linked to a string of kidnappings of foreigners in North Africa in the
past decade, Belmokhtar, who was born in Algeria in 1972, earned a reputation
as one of the most important "gangster-jihadists" of the Sahara.
He also gained prominence as a supplier of arms to Islamist groups and
as a trafficker of cigarettes, which gained him the nickname "Mister
Marlboro" among the local population in the Sahara.
LASER-GUIDED?
Since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and Libya's slide into chaos
and fighting between two rival governments, the North African state has seen
the rise of Islamist militant groups, which have taken advantage of the
turmoil.
Some are allied with al Qaeda's leadership, others have local loyalties
and some have recently declared allegiance with Islamic State, which has been
gaining ground.
Ansar al-Sharia is listed as a terrorist organization by the United
States after it was blamed for the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate compound
in Benghazi that led to the death of the American ambassador.
In 2013, U.S. special forces carried out a raid on Tripoli to capture
Abu Anas al-Liby - a Libyan suspected in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 civilians.
European states and Libya's North African neighbors have grown alarmed
at Islamic State's expansion beyond its strongholds in Iraq and Syria to a
chaotic country just across the Mediterranean sea from mainland Europe and with
little control over its porous borders.
One Ajdabiya city resident said Saturday night's air strike had
appeared to be much more accurate than ones carried out by local forces. The
resident said it appeared to be laser-guided.
"It was a really accurate strike," the witness said. - REUTERS
