An outspoken American al-Qaeda member who threatened a major terror attack in Melbourne has been killed in a US counterterrorism drone strike on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Adam Gadahn, raised on a goat farm on the outskirts of Los Angeles and who converted to Islam around 1995, became a key member of al Qaeda's propaganda machine and often appeared alongside the terror group's leader, Ayman Al-Zawahiri.
He regularly sent out video messages in English.
After deadly terror attacks in Britain and Europe in 2005 Gadahn released a video where he foreshadowed bombings in Melbourne.
"Yesterday, London and Madrid," Gadahn said in the taped message.
"Tomorrow, Los Angeles and Melbourne, Allah willing. And this time, don't count on us demonstrating restraint and compassion."
White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced Gadahn's death on Thursday along with the accidental deaths of two aid workers, American Dr Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto.
Weinstein, Lo Porto and a high-ranking al-Qaeda leader and US citizen, Ahmed Farouq, were likely killed in a separate US drone strike in the border region to the one that hit Gadahn, Earnest said.
The US military did not realise Weinstein and Lo Porto were being held in the al-Qaeda compound.
"As president and as commander-in-chief I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni," US President Barack Obama said in the White House briefing room.
Earnest said Farouq and Gadahn were not specifically targeted "and we did not have information indicating their presence at the sites of these operations".
In 2006 Gadahn became the first US citizen to be charged with treason since World War II and would have faced a death sentence if arrested, extradited and found guilty in the US.
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