Tue 02 August 2022:
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, United States President Joe Biden has said.
Al-Zawahiri was killed on Sunday in the biggest blow to the group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, United States President Joe Biden has said. pic.twitter.com/yyFf2vy5tJ
— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) August 2, 2022
“Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said in a special televised address from outside the White House.
Intelligence had located al-Zawahiri’s family in Kabul earlier this year, Biden said, adding that no members of the family or civilians had been killed in the attack.
An Egyptian surgeon with a $25m reward on his head, al-Zawahiri helped coordinate the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US that killed nearly 3,000 people.
Earlier, US officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told reporters that the CIA carried out a drone attack in Kabul using two missiles. Al-Zawahiri was on his balcony at the time, they said.
The strike was carried out on a residential house in the Sherpur area of Kabul, a diplomatic enclave where many Taliban leaders live now, Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a statement.
The home was in a wealthy area of downtown Kabul and is believed to be linked to a high ranking Taliban official.
Reporting from Kabul, Al Jazeera’s Ali Latifi said the drone strike took place in a “highly residential area of Kabul”.
“It’s near a grocery store, near a bank, and a main street. It is an area where previous warlords, governors and ministers have lived under the previous government. It is not anywhere hidden,” he said.
“That raises the question of how the current leader of al-Qaeda could walk into Kabul without the government knowing and that’s what the US is alluding to when they say this is in violation of the Doha agreement,” he added, noting that the Taliban also accused the US of violating the Doha deal.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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