The Algerian-born militant, one of al-Qaeda’s key allies in North Africa, is understood to have died during airstrikes by French jets earlier this month.
(Express.UK)- The most-wanted jihadi was located with the help of US intelligence and taken out in a targeted strike in Libya, which ha smeared as a terror hotbed.
However claims of his demise have proved notoriously unreliable in the past, with at least two other death reports in recent years, one claiming he was killed in Mali in 2013.
The 43-year-old extremist plotted the raid on a gas plant in Algeria which left almost 60 workers, six of them British, dead.
Belmokhtar’s fate following the air strike has never been confirmed, though the group he leads, Al-Mourabitoun, claimed he had survived.
(Photo Credit: GettyImages via Express.UK)