A US drone strike in Afghanistan has killed Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Zawahiri became the leader of al-Qaeda following the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011.
In a televised address, President Joe Biden said he gave the final go-ahead for the high-precision strike that successfully targeted Zawahiri in the Afghan capital over the weekend.
Biden described the death of al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, as a huge blow to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, masterminds of the September 11 2001 attacks on US.
“Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said, adding that he hoped Zawahiri’s death would bring “closure” to families of the 3,000 people killed in the United States on 9/11.
Al-Zawahiri, who is said to be one of the world’s most deadliest terrorists, is an Egyptian surgeon with a $25m bounty on his head for helping to mastermind the 9/11 attacks in which four civilian aircrafts were hijacked and used to crush the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon near Washington and a Pennsylvania field, killing about 3,000 people.
According to White House officials, Al-Zawahiri was spotted on a balcony on numerous occasions after he moved into a safe house with his family in downtown Kabul, where he continued to produce al-Qaida propaganda videos for several months before he met his waterloo.
President Biden was said to have ordered the attack on the safe house at a meeting of key cabinet members and national security officials on 25 July,
having ensured that every step had been taken to ensure the operation would minimize risk and casualties.
“Two Hellfire missiles were fired at Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was killed. We are confident through our intelligence sources and methods, including multiple streams of intelligence, that we killed al-Zawahiri and no other individual,” a Whitehouse official noted.
The official explained that though al-Zawahiri’s family members were present in the safe house during the strike, they were not targeted nor harmed.
“We have no indications that civilians were harmed in the strike. We took every possible precaution to avoid civilian harm,” the official further noted.
In his reaction on Monday night,Barack Obama, said,”More than 20 years after 9/11, one of the masterminds of that terrorist attack and Osama bin Laden’s successor as the leader of al-Qaeda – Ayman al-Zawahiri – has finally been brought to justice.
“Tonight’s news is also proof that it’s possible to root out terrorism without being at war in Afghanistan. And I hope it provides a small measure of peace to the 9/11 families and everyone else who has suffered at the hands of al-Qaeda,” he concluded