WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States targeted senior al-Qaeda commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar in an airstrike in Libya on Saturday night, the White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed in a press briefing on Monday.
“The Department of Defense has confirmed that Mokhtar Belmokhtar was in fact a target of a counterterrorism strike that was taken in Libya over the weekend,” Earnest said.
Earnest said that Belmokhtar was a member of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and an operational leader of Al-Mourabitoun, an North African jihadist movement that pledged allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group on May 15, 2015.
Belmokhtar, an Algerian national, also known by the nickname The Marlboro Man, is believed to be behind the deadly siege of the southern Algerian Amenas gas plant in January 2013 that killed 37 people from eight countries.
The al-Qaeda veteran has been declared dead several times, but continued to reappear.
