The Libyan militant was killed on August 22 in the volatile Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan, he added.

 

The official said Abd al-Rahman's death is a "tremendous loss for al-Qaeda", because the group's new leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had relied heavily on him.

He will not say how Abd al-Rahman died, but a CIA drone strike was reported in Waziristan on the same day.

Abd al-Rahman is reportedly number two on a list of the five top militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan whom Washington and Islamabad most wanted to capture or kill.

In October 2010, Pakistani officials said they think he has been killed in a US drone strike in North Waziristan.

Believed to be in his late 30s, Abd al-Rahman was a close confidant of Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in a raid in northern Pakistan in May.

Abd al-Rahman joined Bin Laden in Afghanistan as a teenager in the 1980s. He later gained a reputation within al-Qaeda as an explosives expert and Islamic scholar.

He retreated with Bin Laden to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, and became a link to other Islamist militant groups in the Middle East and North Africa.

VOVNews/CNN