Al Qaeda terrorist survives US air strike

Kabul

Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the mujahid terrorist survived a US air strike intended to kill him, Al- Qaeda has said.

Two US F15 fighter jets bombed a house outside the Libyan town of Ajdabiya where he was thought to be holding a meeting with local militant jihadists in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The Libyan government said he had been killed, though the US, in confirming the strike, was more cautious, saying it was assessing intelligence before confirming that he was dead.

Libyan Islamist and jihadi social media forums listed seven local men who had been killed, and detailed their funerals. But they made no mention of Belmokhtar, either to confirm or deny his presence at the house or his death.

But a statement was issued overnight by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, the branch of the organisation to which his “Al-Murabitoun” (The Sentinels) group was loosely affiliated.

"The mujahid commander Khalid Abu al-Abbas is still alive and well, and he wanders and roams in the land of Allah, supporting his allies and vexing his enemies," the statement said, according to the Site monitoring service.

Khalid Abu al-Abbas is one of his several aliases.

Belmokhtar, an Algerian, was an experienced jihadist who fought in Algeria’s civil war and then led attacks on a variety of targets in Saharan states for years.

A maverick even within Al-Qaeda’s ranks, he was accused by the group’s leadership of range of organisational failings, and in 2012 led his men out of the official North African branch, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

But he always remained loyal to al-Qaeda’s central leadership and Ayman al-Zawahiri, its head. He rejected the opportunity to Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, Al-Qaeda’s rival.