US drone kills al-Qaeda’s Zawahiri in Afghanistan
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – The United States (US) killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Afghanistan, the US President Joe Biden said Monday in a speech from the White House.
“I authorized a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield, once and for all,” Biden said.
Al-Zawahiri, 71, had remained a visible international symbol of the al-Qaeda, 11 years after the US killed Osama bin Laden. At one point, he acted as bin Laden’s personal physician.
Al-Zawahiri was sheltering in downtown Kabul to reunite with his family, Biden said, and was killed in what a senior administration official described as “a precise tailored airstrike” using two Hellfire missiles.
The drone strike was conducted at 9:48 pm ET on Saturday was authorized by Biden following weeks of meetings with his Cabinet and key advisers, the official said on Monday, adding that no American personnel were on the ground in Kabul at the time of the strike.
Al-Zawahiri was deeply involved in the planning of 9/11, one of the most responsible for the attacks that murdered 2.977 people on American soil. For decades, he was the mastermind of attacks against Americans,” Biden added.
“Now, justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more. People around the world no longer need to fear the vicious and determined killer,” he noted.
The US president pointed out that his country continues to demonstrate “our resolve and our capacity to defend the American people against those who seek to do us harm.”
He indicated that the “precision strike” targeting was the result of the “extraordinary persistence and skill of the nation’s intelligence community.”
The strike comes one year after Biden ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, prompting Taliban forces to rapidly seize control of the nation.