By Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman Al-Zawahri has been killed in a drone strike by the United States, in Kabul, the Afghanistan capital.
According to Aljazeera, the strike was conducted by America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Sunday, and confirmed by the U.S. President, Joe Biden.
“Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said in a special televised address from outside the White House on Monday.
Al-Zawahri was an Egyptian who took over Al-Qaeda after the U.S. killed its longtime leader, Osama bin Laden, in 2011.
Biden disclosed that intelligence had located al Zawahiri’s family in Kabul earlier this year, adding that no members of the family or civilians had been killed in the attack.
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”.
This development comes nearly a year after the United States finished withdrawing from Afghanistan, the country it invaded in 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks masterminded by bin Laden.
In 2020, Washington and the Taliban signed a deal to pave 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 Taliban militant group seized power in Afghanistan last year, and the United States has insisted that they do not allow their soil to be used by terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda.
