US government sources said on Monday that they were unable to confirm whether Abu Yahya al-Libi had had been killed in the airstrike, but officials said he was regarded as a very senior aide to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Arabiya reported.

The confirmation of Libi’s death will constitute a big blow to al Qaeda since U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden in a secret raid in Pakistan in May 2011.

According to AP the strike was the seventh drone strike in less than two weeks in Pakistan, which is demanding that the United States halt the program. Pakistani intelligence officials told the AP that four missiles were fired at a suspected hideout in North Waziristan, a tribal area near the Afghanistan border, early Monday morning.

A one million bounty has been offered by US authorities for information leading to the capture of Libi, who has filmed many videos urging attacks on US targets who claims to have escaped from a prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan in 2005.

Al- Libi was reported to have been killed in a drone strike in December of 2009, but instead Saleh al-Somali was killed, who is believed to have been in charge of al-Qaeda’s external operations, according to Reuters. Libi was captured in 2002, after NATO forces toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, and was held at the US high-security prison at Bagram Air Base.

Reports from Pakistan said nearly 30 people were killed during the occurrence of strikes, including four suspected fighters on Saturday, 10 suspected fighters on Sunday, and 15 people in the strike in which Libi was targeted.