Nasr Ibn Ali al-Ansi, a senior Al Qaeda leader who took responsibility for the attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris, has reportedly been killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.
In a video statement, an AQAP spokesman said that Nasr Ibn Ali al-Ansi, a top leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed along with his elder son in a US drone strike, SITE Intelligence Group, a terrorist monitoring organisation, confirmed.
Al Ansi is believed to have been killed in April in Mukalla, Yemen. A US official also confirmed to CNN that al-Ansi was dead. It is, however, yet to be corroborated whether he was killed in a drone strike.
Back in January, following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Al Qaeda in Yemen took responsibility for the attack, saying the militant group's leaders ordered the attack to avenge the insult of Prophet Mohammad, according to the video posted on YouTube.
In three days of terror attacks in Paris, the Islamist gunmen killed 17 people including several journalists at the Charlie Hebdo's offices.
"As for the blessed Battle of Paris, we...claim responsibility for this operation as vengeance for the Messenger of God," al-Ansi had said then.
Al-Ansi has appeared in many of the Al Qaeda propaganda videos, including the kidnapping claim of U.S photojournalist Luke Somers.
In 1995 Al Ansi fought in the Bosnian war as a member of Bosnian Muslim El-Mudžahid detachment of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1996, he tried to fight in Kashmir along with separatist but was sent to Afghanistan instead after Pakistan prevented him.
The same year he met with senior Al Qaeda officials and by 1998, he was a close aide of Osama bin Laden.
