Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaeda leader who helped organizing the operations against U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, was reportedly killed.

This news was released by a Western government official, who asked that his identification would not be released. The official also wouldn’t say who killed al-Libi and how. The death of al-Qaeda’s third man was also announced today on the Web site of Al-Ekhlaas, a ``al-Qaeda- affiliated forum'' as the SITE Intelligence Group described it.

"May God have mercy on Sheikh Abu Laith al-Libi and accept him with his brothers, with the martyrs," said a eulogy posted on the Islamist site Al-Ekhlaas

Al-Libi, 41, was one of the top leaders of the organization and he was deeply involved in organizing the Feb. 27, 2007, bombing of an American air base at Bagram, Afghanistan, during Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit. The explosion led to the death of at least 23 people. Fortunately, Cheney wasn’t among the dead.

Al-Libi was on the “most wanted" list of 12 terrorists issued by the Combined Joint Task Force-82 -- an anti-terror unit in Afghanistan in October 2007.

The same official, who announced Al-Libi’s death, said that the terrorist is "not far below the importance of the top two al Qaeda leaders" Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

There were two other U.S. officials who spoke about al-Libi’s death, and according to their sayings, al-Qaeda’s third man was killed by a missile from a fighter jet. Al-Libi, a man of Libyan descent, was in the Afghanistan/Pakistan border region, according to the U.S. military.

In his early days as a terrorist, Al-Libi had joined the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and became its leader. In the 1980s he was one of the Afghan Arabs who came to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union during the Soviet-Afghan War. He returned to Libya and took part in a failed attempt to oust Muammar al-Gaddafi in the early 1990s. In the wake of this attempt al-Libi escaped to Saudi Arabia, where he was imprisoned in Riyadh following the Khobar Towers bombing. Sometime thereafter he was either released or managed to escape, and came to Afghanistan to collaborate with al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group later merged with al-Qaeda and worked together to set up terrorist attacks throughout North Africa and the Middle East.