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.
Al-Zawahiri, 71, was killed by two Hellfire ‘Ninja’ missiles – fitted with extending blades – fired from CIA drones as he stood on the balcony of his safe house in a wealthy area of downtown Kabul this weekend in a mission that took six months to plan.
His wife, daughter, and grandchildren were living with him but were not harmed, American officials said. The home targeted in the strike was owned by a top aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Interior Minister for the Taliban, who is close to senior al Qaeda officials and is wanted by the FBI for questioning.
Al-Zawahiri was standing on the balcony of the three-story home when two R9X missiles – a hellfire missile armed with long blades aimed at killing targets with kinetic energy to minimize major collateral damage – struck.
Apparent photographs of the building show only a few windows on one floor blown out, and the rest intact.
That points to the likely use of a non-explosive version of the Hellfire, the R9X, which deploys a series of knife-like blades from its fuselage and shreds its target but leaves nearby people and objects intact.
‘This year we identified that al-Zawahiri family his wife, his daughter, and her children relocated to a safe house in Kabul,’ a senior administration official told reporters on a background briefing call ahead of Biden’s speech.
Al-Zawahiri was never seen leaving that safe house, the official said.
Al-Zawahiri family members were present in other parts of the safe house at the time of the strike, and were purposefully not targeted and were unharmed,’ the official said.
The official said members of the Taliban took action after the strike to conceal Zawahiri’s former presence at the location, moving swiftly to remove his wife, daughter and her children to another location.
“We have identified a concerted effort to restrict access to the safe house in the surrounding area for hours after the strike. The safe house used by al-Zawahiri is now empty.”
Biden was first briefed on Al-Zawahiri’s location on July 1. The official described their intelligence as ‘rock solid.’
The official said Biden asked ‘detailed questions’ on their intelligence, examined a model of the house that intelligence officials built and brought into the Situation Room for him to see, and asked about the possibility of civilian casualties.
On July 25th, Biden made the decision to authorize the strike.
In a statement, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul “grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the world that they would not allow Afghan territory to be used by terrorists to threaten the security of other countries”.
Washington and the Taliban signed the deal in 2020, paving the way for the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces in return for a guarantee from the Taliban not to allow groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) to operate on Afghan soil. The US forces withdrew just before an August 31 deadline in what turned out to be a chaotic exercise.
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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