Leader said the group chose the target and funded the operation

CAIRO — A top leader of Yemen’s al-Qaida branch has claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on a Paris newspaper when two masked gunmen killed 12 people, including much of the weekly’s editorial staff and two police officers.

Nasr al-Ansi, a top commander of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP as the branch is known, appeared in an 11-minute Internet video posted Wednesday, saying that the massacre at Charlie Hebdo was in “vengeance for the prophet.” The paper had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which is considered an insult in Islam.

Al-Ansi say France belongs to the “party of Satan” and warned of more “tragedies and terror.” He says Yemen’s al-Qaida branch “chose the target, laid out the plan and financed the operation.”