US President Joe Biden says ‘justice has been delivered’ after al-Qaeda leader located and killed in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Printed On 1 Aug 2022
Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, United States President Joe Biden has said.
Al-Zawahiri became killed on Sunday in essentially the most arresting blow to the group since its founder Osama bin Laden became killed in 2011.
“Justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader will not be any extra,” Biden said in a particular televised address from exterior the White House.
Intelligence had located al-Zawahiri’s household in Kabul earlier this year, Biden said, including that no contributors of the household or civilians had been killed within the attack.
An Egyptian surgeon with a $25m reward on his head, al-Zawahiri helped coordinate the September 11, 2001 assaults on the US that killed practically 3,000 folks.
Earlier, US officers talking on the condition of anonymity informed reporters that the CIA utilized a drone attack in Kabul the utilization of two missiles. Al-Zawahiri became on his balcony on the time, they said.
“It’s a critical blow,” Colin Clarke, compare director on the Soufan Team, a international security agency, informed Al Jazeera, including that his presence in Kabul became additionally arresting in what it suggested about his relationship with the Taliban.
“It tells us he’s gotten a ways extra at ease over the last year for the reason that Taliban took over,” Clarke said.
The Taliban confirmed the attack in Kabul – without naming al-Zawahiri – and condemned it as a “violation of international principles”.
The strike became utilized on a residential house within the Sherpur effect of Kabul, a diplomatic enclave the put many Taliban leaders reside now, Taliban chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said in a press birth.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the previous 20 years and are against the interests of the US, Afghanistan and the self-discipline,” Mujahid said.
Al-Qaeda has but to stress a press birth.
In a press birth, US Secretary of Enlighten Antony Blinken said al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul “grossly violated the Doha Agreement and repeated assurances to the enviornment that they wouldn’t enable Afghan territory to be abnormal by terrorists to threaten the safety of a host of countries”.
Washington and the Taliban signed the deal in 2020, paving the methodology for the withdrawal of US-led foreign forces in return for a guarantee from the Taliban not to enable teams such as al-Qaeda and ISIL (ISIS) to feature on Afghan soil. The US forces withdrew correct earlier than an August 31 time restrict in what turned out to be a chaotic bid.
Blinken said by allowing the al-Qaeda leader to refuge in Afghanistan, the Taliban had additionally “betrayed” the Afghan folks and “their very bear acknowledged need for recognition from and normalization with the international neighborhood”.
Reporting from Kabul, Al Jazeera’s Ali Latifi said the drone strike took reveal in a “highly residential effect of Kabul”.
“It’s advance a grocery retailer, advance a bank, and a most critical avenue. It is an effect the put outdated warlords, governors and ministers have lived under the outdated authorities. It is not wherever hidden,” he said.
“That raises the quiz of how the most modern leader of al-Qaeda would possibly perhaps perhaps presumably hunch into Kabul without the authorities shining and that’s what the US is alluding to after they are saying this is in violation of the Doha settlement,” he added, noting that the Taliban additionally accused the US of violating the Doha deal.