U.S. military forces have eliminated a major Al Qaeda terrorist leader in Libya, according to Libyan officials in the eastern town of Beyda who spoke with media on Monday.
The radical Islamist, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, is an Algerian who led a deadly attack on an Algerian gas drilling site and had been dubbed by the French military as “uncatchable.”
Belmokhtar was targeted in a U.S. strike Saturday night on a farmhouse in a city near Benghazi that also killed seven members of the Ansar al Shari’a terrorist organization who were meeting at the site.
Pentagon spokesperson Col. Steve Warren told media in a briefing on Monday that military officials are continuing to assess the results of the operation in order to obtain confirmation of the kill.