Adebayo Adenrele
A United States drone strike has killed Al Qaeda Chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri at a hideout in the Afghan capital.
This attack was confirmed by the President of United States of America, Joe Biden, adding that “justice had been delivered” and Zawahiri’s death would bring “closure” to families of the 3,000 people killed in the United States on September 11, 2001.
In a somber televised address, Biden stated that he gave the final go-ahead for the high-precision strike that successfully targeted Zawahiri in the Afghan Capital over the weekend.
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.
According to the official’s account, the president gave his green light for the strike on July 25, as he was recovering in isolation from Covid-19 while Biden also added that there were no civilian casualties in the operation.
It was the first known over-the-horizon attack by the US on an Al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan since American forces retreated from the country on August 31, 2021.
US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken said that “by hosting and sheltering” Zawahiri, the Taliban had “grossly violated the Doha Agreement” signed in 2020, which prompted America’s withdrawal.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian Surgeon who grew up in a comfortable Cairo household before turning to violent radicalism, had been hiding for 20 years since the 9/11 attacks.
He thereby, took over Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011, and had a $25 million US bounty on his head.