"The fact that he has now been killed, or so it appears, would be a significant blow to his organisation and would call into question their operational effectiveness," said The Telegraph's Chief Foreign Correspondent David Blair.
"It's also interesting to look at where he was supposedly killed, it seems to have happened in northern Mali," he added.
"In response to that, a lot of senior al-Qaeda figures fled further north, to Mali's frontier with Algeria, which is bang in the middle of the Sahara desert and spanned by a mountain range.
"That seems to be where Mokhtar Belmokhtar was finally tracked down, and that area seems to be the last haven for al-Qaeda commanders in the Sahara."
"It's also interesting to look at where he was supposedly killed, it seems to have happened in northern Mali," he added.
"In response to that, a lot of senior al-Qaeda figures fled further north, to Mali's frontier with Algeria, which is bang in the middle of the Sahara desert and spanned by a mountain range.
"That seems to be where Mokhtar Belmokhtar was finally tracked down, and that area seems to be the last haven for al-Qaeda commanders in the Sahara."