An Al-Qaeda source on Monday confirmed the death of one of the leaders of the organisation’s north African wing, in the most significant success yet for the French-led operation against Islamist fighters in Mali.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) chief Abdelhamid Abou Zeid was killed as a result of a French bombing raid in the Ifoghas mountains, an AQIM militant told the private Mauritanian news agency Sahara Medias. The source insisted however that another Islamist leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, was alive and still fighting. That contradicted claims from Chad that its troops had killed the mastermind of the January assault on an Algerian gas plant in January that left 37 hostages dead.