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In a televised deal with, Biden stated the strike in Kabul, Afghanistan had been carried out on Saturday. “I gave the ultimate approval to go get him,” he stated, including that there had been no civilian casualties.
“Justice has been delivered and this terrorist chief isn’t any extra,” Biden stated.
A senior administration official stated Zawahiri had been killed on the balcony of a home in Kabul in a drone strike, and that there had been no US boots on the bottom in Afghanistan.
The official stated that Zawahiri’s presence within the Afghan capital Kabul was a “clear violation” of a deal the Taliban had signed with the US in Doha in 2020 that paved the way in which for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
It was the primary recognized over-the-horizon strike by america on an Al-Qaeda goal in Afghanistan since American forces withdrew from the nation on August 31, 2021.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who grew up in a snug Cairo family earlier than turning to violent radicalism, had been on the run for 20 years for the reason that 9/11 assaults that killed practically 3,000 individuals in america.
He took over Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed by US particular forces in Pakistan in 2011, and had a $25 million US bounty on his head.
Over the weekend the Afghan inside ministry denied stories circulating on social media of a drone strike in Kabul, telling AFP a rocket struck “an empty home” within the capital, inflicting no casualties.
Early Tuesday in Kabul, nonetheless, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted that an “aerial assault” was carried out on a residence within the Sherpur space of town.
“The character of the incident was not revealed at first. The safety and intelligence companies of the Islamic Emirate investigated the incident and located of their preliminary investigations that the assault was carried out by American drones,” his tweet stated.
In current months the Taliban have largely barred media from protecting the aftermath of safety incidents and often deny or downplay any casualties.
The information comes a month earlier than the primary anniversary of the ultimate withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, leaving the nation within the management of the Taliban insurgency that fought Western forces over the previous twenty years.
The US withdrew after the Taliban signed the deal in Doha in 2020 wherein they promised to not permit Afghanistan for use once more as a launchpad for worldwide jihadism, however specialists imagine the group by no means broke their ties with Al-Qaeda.
– Physician turned jihadist Zawahiri, 71, lacked the potent charisma that helped bin Laden rally jihadists around the globe, however willingly channelled his analytical expertise into the Al-Qaeda trigger.
He was believed to be the principle strategist — the actual mastermind who steered operations, together with the September 11 assaults, in addition to bin Laden’s private physician.
Zawahiri’s father was a famend doctor and his grandfather a prayer chief at Cairo’s Al-Azhar institute, the best authority for Sunni Muslims.
He grew to become concerned with Egypt’s radical Muslim group at a younger age and revealed a number of books on Islamic fundamentalism, which got here for a lot of to represent the unconventional Islamist motion.
He left Egypt within the mid-Eighties and headed for Pakistan’s northwestern metropolis of Peshawar the place the resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan was based mostly.
It was at the moment, when 1000’s of Islamist fighters flooded into Afghanistan through the Eighties, that Zawahiri and bin Laden met.
Within the early Nineties Zawahiri is believed to have lived in Europe earlier than becoming a member of bin Laden in Sudan or Afghanistan.
In 1998 he was one among 5 signatories to bin Laden’s “fatwa” calling for assaults in opposition to Individuals and he started showing usually on the Al-Qaeda chief’s aspect.
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