'One-eyed' militant hit, Libya says

Elusive Islamist mastermind was reported killed several times before

A veteran Islamist militant blamed for a deadly attack on an Algerian gas field and accused of running arms smuggling routes across North Africa was hit in a US airstrike in Libya, according to the Libyan government.

The government said on Sunday that the strike had killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian militant who became a major figure in insurgencies across North Africa and the Saharan border region and was dubbed "The Uncatchable" by the French military.