Ayman al-Zawahiri

Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a drone attack that targeted a house in central Kabul, Afghanistan, according to the US.

- He was indicted in the US for his role in the August 7, 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and wounded more than 5,000 others. - Mujahid said the US attack was a “repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the US, Afghanistan and the region”. - It condemned the drone strike as a “violation of international principles” and a violation of the Doha Agreement.

President Biden said the death of Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden, means Afghanistan can no longer “become a terrorist safe haven.”

He remained as a figurehead but failed to prevent the splintering of the Islamist movement in Syria and other conflict zones after 2011. Al-Qaeda hasn’t carried out any major terrorist attacks in the United States or Europe in recent years, following bombings that killed 52 people in London in 2005. Some attackers were inspired by al-Qaeda, such as a Saudi military trainee who killed three American sailors at a U.S. base in Florida in December 2019. A United Nations report in July estimated there were up to 400 al-Qaeda fighters remaining in Afghanistan. Security experts say the operation demonstrates that the United States is still able to carry out precision strikes in Afghanistan after last year’s withdrawal of troops on the ground. Today, though, the group is splintered, with branches and affiliates spanning the globe from West Africa to India. The question remains whether those groups will focus on local conflicts or coalesce for more global ambitions. Zawahiri merged his own Egyptian militant group with al-Qaeda in the 1990s. The strike is the latest in a string of successful U.S. operations against al-Qaeda and Islamic State leaders. Analysts say that in the past, al-Qaeda has adjusted to the loss of leaders, with new figures emerging in their place. In his later years, Zawahiri largely shied from public view, presiding over al-Qaeda at a time of decline, with most of the group’s founding figures dead or in hiding. When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 1996, it gave al-Qaeda the sanctuary that enabled it to run training camps and plot attacks, including 9/11. President Biden said in an address to the nation Monday that Zawahiri’s death — after he evaded capture for decades — sent a clear message: “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”

Get all of the latest World news from The Scotsman. Providing fresh perspective online for news across the UK.

The strike was carried out by the CIA, according to five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. He said US intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. Speaking on August 31, 2021, after the last US troops left Afghanistan, Mr Biden said the US would not let up on its fight against terrorism in that country or elsewhere.

Taliban condemns US for drone attack and calls it 'clear violation of international principles and Doha Agreement'

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. “There were no casualties as the house was empty,” Abdul Nafi Takor, the spokesperson, said. Al-Zawahiri, 71, was an Egyptian surgeon and a top lieutenant of Osama bin Landen who organised Islamist cells in Cairo when he was younger. By clicking ‘Register’ you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use, Cookie policy and Privacy notice. By clicking ‘Register’ you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use, Cookie policy and Privacy notice. It said it “strongly condemns this attack” and called it a “clear violation of international principles” and the Doha Agreement, the 2020 that led to the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan.

A round-up of international reaction after the US said a drone strike had killed al-Zawahiri in Kabul.

The death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a step toward a safer world. “The death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a step toward a safer world. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid strongly condemned the attack, calling it a violation of “international principles”.

US president says 'terrorist leader is no more' after bin Laden successor is killed in Kabul.

The limited achievements of its affiliate in Yemen, once seen as a major potential threat to the region and the west, must have been a disappointment. He was spotted on a balcony on numerous occasions over several months and continued to produce al-Qaida propaganda videos, some of which may yet appear posthumously. Our thoughts today are with the loved ones of all of his victims. While Monday’s news was a “mission accomplished” moment, simmering tensions over Taiwan show how the US government is now building a new national security machine to challenge China’s rising power. What will be the strategy of the new leader? An oath of loyalty is sworn not to the group, but to the individual. Instead, links with groups around the world were reinforced and efforts made to expand through gradually winning support from communities on the ground. Though al-Qaida was known for its innovative empowerment of local cells, the man at the top of the hierarchy has real authority. He has to stay alive, communicate despite considerable logistic challenges, deal with regimes such as the Taliban and formulate a clear idea of what his subordinates should be doing. The forces of freedom will bring you to justice. Daskalakis, director of the agency’s HIV prevention division and a national expert on issues affecting the LGBTQ+ community, previously helped lead New York City’s Covid-19 response. The world is a safer place today.

US President Biden has announced that a precision drone-attack by the US in downtown Kabul has killed Al-Qaeda chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

It was here that he was killed by ‘hellfire’ missiles from a US drone. “Now justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more,” American President Biden said during a press address Monday. “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.” United States President Joe Biden has announced that a precision drone-attack by the US in downtown Kabul has killed Al-Qaeda Chief Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who had helped orchestrate the September 11 attacks.

Ayman al-Zawahiri was Al Qaeda's top leader after Osama Bin Laden. He was killed yesterday in a US drone strike in Kabul.

Zawahiri was raised in Cairo’s leafy Maadi suburb, a place favoured by expatriates from the Western nations he railed against. By then he was living the spartan life of a militant after helping Bin Laden to form al Qaeda. Zawahiri did not emerge from Cairo's slums, like others drawn to militant groups who promised a noble cause. We were expecting Zawahiri to be killed at some point. this seems to be the house where #Zawahiriwas killed #AlQaeda #Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/pkpcaklg0z August 2, 2022 Instead, militancy returned to its roots in local-level conflicts, driven by a mix of local grievances and incitement by transnational jihadi networks using social media. US officials said the attack took place on Sunday in the Afghan capital Kabul. It speaks volumes about the group’s positioning two decades after 9/11.— Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) August 2, 2022 No one else was hurt. Born in 1951 to a prominent Cairo family, Zawahiri was a grandson of the grand imam of Al Azhar, one of Islam's most important mosques. He was killed in a drone attack when he came out on the balcony of the house on Sunday morning, the official said. Taking over the leadership of Islamic Jihad in Egypt in 1993, Zawahiri was a leading figure in a campaign in the mid-1990s to overthrow the government and set up a purist Islamic state.

How two thunderous blasts led the BBC's Lyse Doucet to Ayman al-Zawahiri's villa in the "town of thieves".

Was this a reply rehearsed in advance, an echo of the Taliban's official statement? We don't know who they are." Kabulis called it Choorpur, the town of thieves. The Taliban also accuse the US of violating their deal in their attack against a residential neighbourhood of Kabul. A statement from a Taliban spokesman warned that "repeating such actions will damage the existing opportunities". But now it emerges that he was a guest of the Taliban leadership, living in that villa smack in the centre of Kabul and said to belong to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the acting Taliban interior minister, who is under US terrorism sanctions. They don't speak the local languages.

Ayman al-Zawahiri helped plan the 9/11 attacks and was among America's most wanted men.

Days before the withdrawal, a miscalculated US drone strike killed 10 innocent people in Kabul, including an aid worker and seven children. The streets are quiet - this news is explosive. Adjacent shops were told by the Taliban to close their rooftops. 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. Some 344 firefighters were also killed. The US has killed the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a drone strike in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden has confirmed.

From a middle class Egyptian family, his foray into the world of terrorism and jihad began in a Cairo clinic where he was working as a young doctor and eye ...

He led the creation of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, North Africa, Somalia and Asia. But al-Zawahri sought to co-opt the wave of uprisings, insisting that they would have been impossible if the 9/11 attacks had not weakened America. He joined the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group and pursued his teenage aim to overthrow Cairo’s “infidel” regime. Al-Zawahiri had the experience of an underground revolutionary. In prison he was regularly tortured, which led to further radicalisation. And with it, his life and world history was to change.

Leader of global militant group was killed in US drone strike in Afghanistan on Sunday.

Until al-Qaida released a video of Zawahiri in April, many had speculated the ageing leader was already dead. Biden made the decision to assassinate Zawahiri last week. Zawahiri orchestrated suicide bombings over several decades and had become one of the world’s most wanted men.

When President Biden returned from a five-day trip to Europe in July, he met officials in the Situation Room and was briefed on the tracking of ...

“Bin Laden always looked up to him,” said terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University. Al-Zawahiri “spent time in an Egyptian prison, he was tortured. Experts believe he provided the on-the-ground experience and jihadist credentials bin Laden – who was from a wealthy Saudi family – lacked. The earliest opportunity for it to be carried out came on Sunday, when Mr Biden was yet again isolated due to his “rebound” Covid-19 infection. On July 1, when President Biden returned from a five-day European trip to meet with Nato and G7 leaders, he met aides in the Situation Room and was shown a small model of the home Al-Zawahiri had been tracked to. It remains unclear where the drone was launched from. This measure was carefully planned, rigorously, to minimise the risk of harm to other civilians,” Mr Biden said.

After a decades-long hunt the simple habit of sitting out on the balcony gave the CIA an opportunity to launch 'tailored strike'

In August last year one such US drone strike in Kabul was initially hailed by the Pentagon as a successful mission to take out a would-be terrorist bomber planning an attack on the city’s airport. The White House made further claims to bolster its argument that the attack was lawful, flawless and with a loss of life limited to Zawahiri alone. As discussions about a possible strike grew more intense, the model was brought into the situation room of the White House on 1 July so that Biden could see it for himself. Biden’s insistence that no one other than the al-Qaida leader was killed in the attack was amplified repeatedly by US officials. In their telling of events, US officials were at pains to stress that under Joe Biden’s instructions the mission was carried out carefully and with precision to avoid civilian casualties. According to a US official who briefed reporters on Monday, it was such regular behavior that allowed intelligence agents, presumably CIA, to piece together what they called “a pattern of life” of the target.

Drone strike against al-Qaida leader praised across US political spectrum but 9/11 families press for Saudi accountability.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi nationals. If we’re going to be serious about accountability, we must hold everyone accountable.” The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said in a statement that Biden “deserves credit” for approving the strike that killed Zawahiri, but the Republican stalwart noted that the administration needs a “comprehensive plan” to address al-Qaida in Afghanistan.

This is a significant step forward and is particularly meaningful to the 9/11 community as we continue our years-long battle for justice and accountability ...

Start your Independent Premium subscription today. The grassroots organisation added that Mr Biden’s efforts to declassify Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the attacks was crucial to their efforts. “This is a significant step forward and is particularly meaningful to the 9/11 community as we continue our years-long battle for justice and accountability,” said the 9/11 Justice group

Founder of al-Qaida with Osama bin Laden who went on to succeed him as its leader.

In 2000, Zawahiri was blamed for the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. In 2001, he hired the Malaysian biochemist Yazid Sufaat to cultivate anthrax in a laboratory near Kandahar airport. Bin Laden and Zawahiri accused the Saudi royal family – “brothers of Satan” – of betraying Islam through deference to a Jewish-controlled west. Zawahiri further inflamed intra-Muslim tensions when he accused Iran – and by extension, Shias – of being “religion-sellers” who helped the UK and US bring down the Taliban. In April 2013 the former leader of al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announced the birth of IS in Raqqa, Syria. Soon his zealots were fighting al-Qaida’s official Syrian subsidiary, the al-Nusra Front. They attracted Nusra deserters and younger foreign recruits, including from Britain, France, the US and Australia. Unlike al-Qaida, IS conquered actual territory. Bin Laden moved his headquarters to Sudan late that year and Zawahiri followed. Zawahiri called democracy “a new religion that deifies humans and gives them the authority to formulate their own laws … while Islam gives the right to legislate exclusively to Allah”. More than anything, he wrote, Egypt’s rapid defeat in the June 1967 war persuaded him that existing Arab structures were bankrupt. From a state school Zawahiri went to Cairo University, and in 1974 graduated as a doctor. As a spokesperson, he often appeared on video; seven weeks after the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005, for instance, he hailed “ the blessed London battle … a slap to the face of the tyrannical, crusader British arrogance”. After Azzam was murdered in 1989, Zawahiri became Bin Laden’s new mentor, personal physician, spokesperson and arms procurer. The extent to which Zawahiri had shaped al-Qaida showed in the 9/11 attacks. The former was the son of a wealthy Saudi building contractor; the latter a product of Egypt’s educated class. After nearly two decades in hiding, the Egyptian terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri, successor to Osama bin Laden as head of al-Qaida, has died aged 71.

After hunting for him for 21 years, U.S. forces killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri over the weekend with a drone strike targeting him at a safe house in ...

You may click on “Your Choices” below to learn about and use cookie management tools to limit use of cookies when you visit NPR’s sites. If you click “Agree and Continue” below, you acknowledge that your cookie choices in those tools will be respected and that you otherwise agree to the use of cookies on NPR’s sites. NPR’s sites use cookies, similar tracking and storage technologies, and information about the device you use to access our sites (together, “cookies”) to enhance your viewing, listening and user experience, personalize content, personalize messages from NPR’s sponsors, provide social media features, and analyze NPR’s traffic.

Once the news cycle moves on, it will be business as usual for the US, the Taliban and even al-Qaeda itself.

The current US president and those in his administration are undoubtedly aware of this. We are likely to witness the same between the US and the Taliban after al-Zawahiri’s killing. And he knew that he did not need to be one to ensure the group’s expansion and longevity. The set of ideas that guide the group existed long before al-Qaeda, and will undoubtedly continue to be supported by some in zones of failing governance or alienation after its elimination. During al-Zawahiri’s tenure, al-Qaeda adopted an expansion model which can best be described as “franchising”. Under his command, the group expanded its reach from Mali to Kashmir with the addition of numerous largely autonomous and financially self-sufficient branches or “franchises”. As these branches are able to continue operations without much intervention from the central command, the death of any leader is unlikely to cause the network to disintegrate. However, it is unlikely that it will lead to any significant change or mark a turning point in the regional let alone global status quo.

Ayman alZawahri left listens during a news conference with Osama bin Laden in Khost Afghanistan. Zawahiri (left), who was killed on Monday, listens during a ...

Yet West said that the participants also expressed “deep concerns” about the presence, in Afghanistan, of Al Qaeda and other groups, including Tehrik-e-Taliban, known as the Pakistani Taliban, which seeks the overthrow of the nuclear-armed government in Islamabad. During the negotiations, Taliban envoys told their American counterparts privately, as my colleague Adam Entous and I reported late last year, that, if the U.S. bombed the Islamic State, “We will hang flowers around your necks.” About Al Qaeda members, they added, “Kill as many as you want.” Of course, talk behind closed doors is easy; on a number of topics, the Taliban’s interpretation of what they promised in the Doha Agreement has proved to be starkly different from what American negotiators had hoped. Although he and bin Laden respected and trusted Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban’s founding emir, who died in 2013, they regarded other Taliban commanders and leaders as self-interested, opportunistic, and dangerous, according to “ The Bin Laden Papers,” a revelatory book that analyzes internal Al Qaeda correspondence, published earlier this year by the social scientist Nelly Lahoud. According to recent scholarship based on papers captured from Bin Laden’s hideout, the C.I.A.’s drone campaign that targeted Al Qaeda between 2008 and 2013 devastated the core organization, which was based in Pakistan and Afghanistan. More recently, the rise of the Islamic State has eclipsed Al Qaeda in the Middle East, and even in Afghanistan. Resetting relations with the Taliban will be high on the new leader’s agenda. The Taliban’s initial response to Zawahiri’s killing was strikingly mild. In June, a United Nations unit that monitors terrorism reported that Al Qaeda enjoys “increased freedom of action” in Afghanistan. Yet, when Taliban militias swept into Kabul last summer, as the U.S.-backed government collapsed, the Taliban’s commanders immediately freed hundreds of Islamic State prisoners. Afterward, Tom West, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan, wrote on Twitter that participants in the talks had acknowledged “the Taliban’s active operational efforts” against the group. 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. After the strike, the Taliban removed all signs of his stay from the safe house in which he had been residing. The President called Saturday’s strike “proof that it’s possible to root out terrorism without being at war in Afghanistan.” The obvious rejoinder is that the boldness reflected in Zawahiri’s presence in downtown Kabul—he was reportedly killed while meeting with other Al Qaeda leaders—suggests the rising danger that terrorist groups pose under Taliban hospitality.