Terrorist organization Al Qaeda announced in a recently posted online video that one of their senior leaders was killed in the Arabian Peninsula by a U.S. military airstrike, along with his oldest son and several other militant fighters.

Al Qaeda operative Khaled Batarfi announced the death of Nasr al-Ansi’s in a video posted on the Internet Wednesday.

Al-Ansi was believed to have close ties to the late al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden and was featured in several video appearances on behalf of the group’s Yemen branch. In January, he confirmed that the Yemen branch had claimed responsibility for the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical magazine that frequently lampooned the prophet Muhammad in cartoons and drawings.

12 employees lost their lives in the Charlie Hebdo massacre.

During a press briefing on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter would not confirm whether the senior terrorist leader had actually been killed.

“I cannot give you a specific response on this particular strike. We just don’t talk about those and certainly not from this podium,” he said.

“I will say though that to the general question of AQAP in Yemen, we continue to apply pressure there. Obviously, the circumstances have changed in Yemen,” Carter added. “And said earlier, it’s more when you have a stable government in a country, it gives you more opportunities for counter-terrorism operations. But we do have other ways of doing that, and we’re keeping up the pressure on Al Qaeda, and we intend to continue to do so.”

An unidentified U.S. official ultimately did confirm to CNN that al-Ansi was dead, but refused to say whether it was a result of a U.S. airstrike.