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Taliban says it has not found body of al Qaeda terrorist hit by US drone strike in Kabul

FOX News

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. The Taliban says it has not been able to find the body of al Qaeda terrorist leader Ayman al Zawahiri after a U.S. air strike hit the home he was staying at in Afghanistan. The U.S. said it killed al Zawahiri with a drone strike in the Afghan capital of Kabul in July. The al Qaeda leader was standing on the balcony of a home owned by an aide to Sirajuddin Haqqani, top deputy of the Taliban's supreme leader Mullah Haibatallah Akhundzada.


Taliban Say 'No Information' About Al-Qaeda Chief Zawahiri In Afghanistan

International Business Times

The Taliban said Thursday they have no knowledge of Ayman al-Zawahiri's presence in Afghanistan, days after US President Joe Biden announced the Al-Qaeda chief's killing by a drone strike in Kabul. Zawahiri's assassination is the biggest blow to Al-Qaeda since US special forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, and calls into question the Taliban's promise not to harbour militant groups. "The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has no information about Ayman al-Zawahiri's arrival and stay in Kabul," said an official statement -- the Taliban's first mention of his name since Biden's announcement. Zawahiri was believed to be in charge of steering Al-Qaeda's operations -- including the 9/11 attacks -- as well as serving as bin Laden's personal doctor. A senior US administration official said the 71-year-old Egyptian was on the balcony of a three-storey house in the Afghan capital when targeted with two Hellfire missiles early on Sunday.


Ayman al-Zawahiri and the Taliban

The New Yorker

During his long career as a polemicist and a strategist of terror, Ayman al-Zawahiri often taunted the United States. He hewed to the familiar theme that America was an apostate power at war with Islam. But he also described it as a spent force. In a video released this spring, he said that "U.S. weakness" was responsible for the war triggered by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and he mocked the country's standing "after its defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan, after the economic disasters caused by the 9/11 invasions, after the coronavirus pandemic, and after it left its ally Ukraine as prey for the Russians." The U.S. drone strike in Kabul last Saturday that killed Zawahiri, who was seventy-one, added a punctuation mark to the long search for justice for the victims of 9/11 and of other deadly attacks that Zawahiri directly approved, such as the bombing of two U.S. Embassies in Africa in 1998, which killed twelve Americans and more than two hundred Africans.


US Kills Al-Qaeda Chief In Kabul Drone Strike

International Business Times

A United States drone strike killed Al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri at a hideout in the Afghan capital, President Joe Biden said Monday, adding "justice had been delivered" to the families of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In a somber televised address, Biden said he gave the final go-ahead for the high-precision strike that successfully targeted Zawahiri in the Afghan capital over the weekend. "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. A senior administration official said Zawahiri was on the balcony of a house in Kabul when he was targeted with two Hellfire missiles, an hour after sunrise on July 31, and that there had been no US boots on the ground in Afghanistan. "We are not aware of him ever leaving the safe house. We identified Zawahiri on multiple occasions for sustained periods of time on the balcony of where he was ultimately struck," the official said.


The Strike That Killed al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahiri Is a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds Like

Slate

President Joe Biden's surprise announcement Monday night--that a U.S. drone strike over the weekend killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of al-Qaida and co-architect of the 9/11 terrorist attack--is both more and less significant than it might seem at first glance. On the one hand, mainly because of the West's counter-terrorism strategies, al-Qaida is far from the potent global force that it was a decade ago. Its presence has been muted, and Zawahiri himself has hidden so far out of sight that one prominent expert speculated back in November that he might have been killed already. On the other hand, one fact about this drone strike hints at a much larger finding: It took place in Afghanistan. It turns out Zawahiri was living with his family in a large safehouse in downtown Kabul--meaning he had to be there with the Taliban's full blessing. This means that, contrary to the Taliban's assurances, they have been plotting a revival of their alliance with al-Qaida--the alliance that Osama bin Laden formed at the turn of the century and that spawned the attack on the World Trade Center.


Biden Says US Killed Al-Qaeda Chief Al-Zawahiri In Afghanistan

International Business Times

President Joe Biden announced Monday that the United States had killed Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world's most wanted terrorists and suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks. In a televised address, Biden said the strike in Kabul, Afghanistan had been carried out on Saturday. "I gave the final approval to go get him," he said, adding that there had been no civilian casualties. "Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more," Biden said. A senior administration official said Zawahiri had been killed on the balcony of a house in Kabul in a drone strike, and that there had been no US boots on the ground in Afghanistan.


Who is Ayman Al Zawahiri? Al Qaeda leader killed in Afghanistan

FOX News

Ayman Al Zawahiri, the terrorist killed in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan Monday, was a top deputy to al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden before taking the helm of the organization after his predecessor's death in 2011. A drone strike on a Kabul home took him out over the weekend, Fox News reported earlier. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed and condemned the attack on Twitter, calling it "a clear violation of international principles," according to a translation of the thread. However, the 2020 Doha Agreement, which preceded the Biden administration's highly criticized withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan last year, called for the Taliban to combat terrorism within the country. Al Zawahiri was also a doctor and founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad terror group, which later merged with al-Qaeda, according to authorities.