A top Tunisian terrorist and associate of late Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by a US airstrike in Libya last month.

A top Tunisian terrorist and associate of late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed by a US airstrike in Libya last month, the New York Times reported.

Seifallah Ben Hassine, Tunisia’s most wanted Jihadist, who masterminded a campaign of assassinations and terrorist attacks, including one against the United States Embassy in Tunis, was killed mid-June in an airstrike that targeted a top Al Qaeda-linked terrorist, the paper said.

Ben Hassine, also known as Abu Ayadh, is believed to have coordinated a string of assassinations, including the killing of famed Afghan anti-Taliban fighter Ahmad Shah Masood in 2001.

He was one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants and the leader of the outlawed group Ansar al-Shariah in Tunisia. He had been based in Libya since 2013, according to reports, and ran training camps and a network of militant cells across the region.

Tunisian officials also accused Ben Hassine of directing the killings of two secular Tunisian politicians in 2013, the paper reported.

"His death, if confirmed, would be an important victory for Tunisia in its struggle to contain a persistent insurgency in its western border region and a growing threat to its urban centers," New York Times said.

Moreover, Tunisian station Radio Mosaique first reported Ben Hassine's death, which the US paper said it had confirmed with an official in Washington.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a confidential military assessment, said Ben Hassine died in a strike that targeted Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a top Al Qaeda-linked militant believed to have masterminded a deadly attack on an Algerian gas plant in 2013.

Libya's government reported at the time that Belmokhtar was killed in the attack but Al Qaeda's North Africa branch denied it.

Hassine had been on a United Nations blacklist since 2002 over his links to al-Qaeda. He was imprisoned in Tunisia in 2003 but released under an amnesty after the ouster of ex-President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

He fought alongside Bin Laden in Afghanistan in 2001 before travelling to Pakistan and then Turkey where he was arrested and extradited, the newspaper reported.