US President Joe Biden announced on Monday that the United States had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda and one of the world’s most wanted men, who is suspected of masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Biden said in a televised address that he gave the green light to a high-definition raid that successfully targeted al-Zawahiri in the Afghan capital over the weekend.
“Justice has been served and this terrorist leader has been eliminated,” Biden said, adding that he hoped the killing of Zawahiri would help the families of the victims of the September 11 attacks “turn the page.”
A senior administration official said that al-Zawahiri was on his balcony in Kabul when he was hit by Hellfire missiles an hour after sunrise on July 31, and that there were no American soldiers in Afghanistan.
“We don’t know if he ever left the safe house. We met with al-Zawahiri several times and for a long period of time on the balcony, where he was eventually targeted,” the official added.
According to the official version, the president gave the go-ahead for the strike on July 25 while he was in isolation due to Covid infection. Biden said there were no civilian casualties during the operation.
The official dismissed al-Zawahiri’s presence in the Afghan capital of Kabul as a “clear violation” of the Doha Agreement signed by the Taliban with the United States in 2020, which paved the way for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
This is the first US raid on an al-Qaeda facility in Afghanistan since the withdrawal of US troops from the country on August 31, 2021.
And al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian doctor who became one of the world’s most wanted men after he was accused of masterminding the September 2001 US attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, has been in hiding ever since.
Al-Zawahiri led al-Qaeda after the assassination of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. The US provided a $25 million reward for information on him.
On Saturday morning, the Afghan interior ministry denied social media reports of a drone strike in Kabul, telling AFP that the missile had hit an “empty house” in the capital with no casualties.
Early Tuesday morning, Taliban government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted about an “air attack” on a house in Kabul’s Sherpur district.
In a tweet, he said: “The nature of the incident was not revealed at first. The security and intelligence agencies conducted an investigation into the incident and during their preliminary investigations concluded that the attack was carried out by American drones.”
The news comes a month before the anniversary of the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan and the transfer of the country to the control of the Taliban, who have been fighting Western forces for the past two decades.
Under the 2020 Doha Agreement, the Taliban pledged to prevent Afghanistan from being reused as a foothold, but experts say the group has not severed ties to al-Qaeda.
“What we do know is that Haqqani, a senior Taliban leader, was aware of his presence in Kabul,” Biden’s spokesman said.
