Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in the Afghanistan 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.
“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.
Zawahiri had also masterminded other acts of violence, including the suicide bombing of the USS Cole naval destroyer in Aden in October 2000 which killed 17 US sailors.
Earlier, US officials speaking on the condition of anonymity told reporters earlier that the CIA carried out a drone attack in Kabul using two missiles.
Reporting from Kabul, Al Jazeera’s Ali Latifi said the drone strike had reportedly taken place on a house that belonged to a Taliban leader.
“This is 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 war lords, governors and ministers have lived under the previous government. It is not anywhere hidden.
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“That raises the question of how the current leader of al-Qaeda could walk into Kabul without the government knowing and that’s what Joe Biden is alluding to when he says this is in violation of the Doha agreement.
Latifi explained that now both the US and the Taliban have been exchanging accusations about the other violating the Doha agreement.
Ayman al-Zawahiri comes from a distinguished Egyptian family, according to the New York Times.
His grandfather, Rabia’a al-Zawahiri, was an imam at the prestigious al-Azhar University in Cairo. His great-uncle, Abdel Rahman Azzam, was the first secretary of the Arab League.
He played central role in the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and eventually helped to mastermind the deadliest terror attack on American soil, when hijackers turned US airliners into missiles.
In September 2014, Zawahiri had announced the creation of Al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate – the Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), taking advantage of sanctuaries in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
“A new branch of Al-Qaeda was established – Qaeda al-Jihad in the Indian subcontinent, seeking to raise the flag of jihad,…and return the Islamic rule across the Indian subcontinent,” Zawahiri had said at the time.
The al-Qaeda’s regional affiliate was led by Asim Umar – an Indian and former member of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami. Umar was killed in a joint US-Afghan military raid in the Afghan Province of Helmand in September 2019.
A Taliban spokesman described the US operation to kill Zawahiri as a clear violation of international principles.