The US has killed the leader of Al-Qaeda Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike in Afghanistan. President Joe Biden said Monday in a speech from the White House.
BBC Reported on Tuesday that He was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital of Kabul at 8:18 am on Sunday.
This is the biggest blow to the international terrorist organization since the killing of Al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2, 2011.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor is considered one of the planners of the hijacking of civilian planes and suicide attacks on New York’s World Trade Center (Twin Towers), the Pentagon and Pennsylvania in 2001, killing more than 3,000 people. who was Osama bin Laden’s top adviser at the time.
In a statement from the White House, President Biden said that justice had been done. That terrorist leader is no longer alive. We never lost.
A senior official in the Biden administration said that intelligence confirmed that Zawahiri was the person killed in the CIA attack in Kabul.
The official said that Zawahiri was a threat to all US citizens, US interests and national security. His death is a major blow to al-Qaeda. As a result, the ability of this organization to survive will decrease a lot.
Rumors of Zawahiri’s death have surfaced many times in the past years, and there have been reports of his health at various times. Now the news of his death in Kabul raises the question whether it was the Taliban who returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021 who sheltered Zawahiri there or not. The Taliban took control of Kabul two decades after the US and its allies withdrew their forces from Afghanistan.
Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid in a statement acknowledged the attack in Kabul and strongly condemned it. According to him, it is a violation of international norms.
— BBC
