Leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahairi has been killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan as confirmed by President Joe Biden.
According to reports, he was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday.
Ayman al-Zawahairi and Osama bin Laden were America’s Most wanted Terrorist. Together they had planted the 9/11 attcaks.
Mr Biden said “al-Zawahiri “carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens”.
“From hiding, he co-ordinated al-Qaeda’s branches and all around the world, including setting priorities for providing operational guidance and calling for and inspired attacks against US targets,” the president said in a live television address from the White House.
“Now justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” he added.
The FBI updated its Most Wanted Terrorist poster on Monday with Zawahiri’s status: “Deceased.”
The 71-year-old Egyptian doctor turned terrorist took over al-Qaeda after the death of his partener Bin Laden in 2011.
According to President Biden, Several months of planning ended succesfully as he gave the final approval for the “precision strike”
Officials said Zawahiri was on the balcony of a safe house – where he reportedly often sat for hours – when the drone fired two missiles at him.
Other family members were present, but they were unharmed and only Zawahiri was killed in the attack, they added.
However, the Taliban and al-Qaeda are long-time allies and US officials said the Taliban were aware of Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul, and he lived freely and in the open in the Afghan capital.
Zawahiri’s killing comes nearly a year after Mr Biden withdrew US troops from Afghanistan, bringing an end to a 20-year military presence there, and allowing the Taliban to retake control of the country by force.
In background briefings, US intelligence officers accused Taliban affiliates of going to the safe house after the strike to try to cover up evidence of Zawahiri’s presence there.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri in Kabul, the Taliban had “grossly violated” the peace agreement.
The drone strike is the first known US intervention inside Afghanistan since the military pullout last August and, despite the withdrawal, the decades-old “war on terror” grinds on, the BBC’s North America Correspondent John Sudworth observes.
Days before the withdrawal, a miscalculated US drone strike killed 10 innocent people in Kabul, including an aid worker and seven children. The US said it had been a “tragic mistake” and had been aiming to target a local branch of the so-called Islamic State jihadist group.