DAccording to President Joe Biden, the United States killed al-Qaeda leader Aiman al-Zawahiri in a drone attack in the Afghan capital Kabul. “This terrorist leader is no longer alive,” Biden said in a televised address Monday night. “We will always do what is necessary to keep Americans safe at home and around the world.”
A US official initially said on Monday only that the US carried out an “anti-terrorist operation against a key al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan” over the weekend. He added: “The operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties.”
Central figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks
The Afghan Interior Ministry had rejected rumors of a drone attack in the capital Kabul at the weekend. On Tuesday night, Taliban spokesman Sabihullah Mujahid wrote on Twitter that an “air strike” had been carried out on a house in the Sherpur district of Kabul. Initial investigations had revealed “that the attack was carried out by American drones”.
Al-Zawahiri had taken over the leadership of al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011. Born in Egypt, al-Zawahiri was considered a central figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States that killed around 3,000 people. The United States put a $25 million bounty on his head.
The operation, in which al-Zawahiri was now apparently killed, was carried out almost a year after the US and its western allies withdrew troops from Afghanistan. In the course of the withdrawal, the radical Islamic Taliban seized power in Afghanistan again and inflicted a great shame on the West.
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