Ansi`s death would suggest the covert U.S. drone program against the Yemen branch of the global militant group is continuing, despite the evacuation of American military advisers from the country amid a worsening civil war.
The U.S. sources said Washington believed Ansi was the AQAP commander of northern Yemen and that no civilians had been killed.
Ansi, an ideologue and former fighter, had appeared in several of the group`s videos.
Al Qaeda views Houthis as heretics since they belong to a branch of Shi`ite Islam.
SITE cited media as saying Ansi was killed in a drone strike in Mukalla, a city in Yemen`s Hadramawt governorate, in April, along with his son Mohammed and six other fighters.
Ansi had fought in Bosnia in the 1990s and worked for Al Qaeda in the Philippines and Afghanistan.
On April 14, AQAP announced that one of its leaders, Ibrahim al-Rubaish, had been killed by a U.S. air strike.
Rubaish was a Saudi national released from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in 2006.
The United States has poured aid and personnel into Yemen in recent years as part of its war on Islamist militants.
But it withdrew military personnel and pulled out of the al-Anad military base it was using in Yemen last month, as Iran-allied Shi`ite Muslim Houthi fighters advanced, plunging the impoverished country further into chaos.
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