Libya militant group denies Belmokhtar death in US strike
A militant group in Libya has denied reports that a senior commander of the al-Qaeda terrorist group was killed in a US airstrike on the North African country.
In a statement on Tuesday, the so-called Ansar al-Sharia militant group announced that seven people lost their lives in the attack in eastern Libya, stressing that the al-Qaeda veteran Mokhtar Belmokhtar was not among the killed.
“No other person [except the seven] was killed,” read the group’s statement.
The statement came a day after a militant “with links to extremists in Libya” also rejected his death, The Associated Press reported.
On Monday, Pentagon Spokesman Colonel Steve Warren claimed that the US military conducted an airstrike in the North African country to target an “al-Qaeda-associated terrorist.”
“We are assessing the results of the operation,” he went on to say.
US Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James also stated that “the actual impact of that raid is still being assessed."
Belmokhtar is believed to be the mastermind of a deadly terrorist attack on a gas plant in Algeria in 2013, which left 35 people, including three US nationals, dead.
Last year, Washington officially accused Belmokhtar of leading the Algeria raid and filed terrorism charges against the militant.
Libya is beset with a political crisis as it currently has two rival governments, one based in the capital, Tripoli, and the other, which is internationally recognized, in the eastern city of Bayda.
Terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda and ISIL, have exploited the widening power vacuum in the restive country, seeking to solidify their presence there.
Several rounds of peace talks brokered by the United Nations have been held in recent months aimed at forming a unity government between rival factions in Libya. The negotiations have failed to deliver any practical results so far.
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