WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden expressed hope Monday that the killing of al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri brings “yet another measure of closure” to households of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, assaults on the US.
Biden made the feedback as he confirmed that a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan this weekend killed al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri.
“He won't ever once more, by no means once more, enable Afghanistan to turn out to be a terrorist secure haven as a result of he's gone and we’re going to guarantee that nothing else occurs,” Biden stated in an handle from the White Home formally saying the operation.
“This terrorist chief isn't any extra,” Biden stated.
He stated U.S. intelligence officers tracked al-Zawahri to a house in downtown Kabul the place he was hiding out together with his household. The president accredited the operation final week and it was carried out on Sunday.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows beneath.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan this weekend killed Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over as al-Qaida chief after Osama bin Laden’s dying in a U.S. raid. President Joe Biden was set to announce the killing Monday, delivering a major counterterrorism win simply 11 months after American troops left the nation after a two-decade struggle.
The strike, carried out by the Central Intelligence Company, was confirmed by 5 folks conversant in the matter who spoke on the situation of anonymity earlier than Biden was set to transient the American folks on the main points of the operation in a 7:30 p.m. EDT handle to the nation.
Al-Zawahri’s loss eliminates the determine who greater than anybody formed al-Qaida, first as Osama bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Collectively, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi motion’s weapons to focus on the US, finishing up the deadliest assault ever on American soil — the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.
Present and former officers started listening to Sunday afternoon that al-Zawahri had been killed in a drone strike, however the administration delayed releasing the knowledge till his dying may very well be confirmed, in keeping with one individual.
White Home officers declined to verify al-Zawahri was killed however famous in an announcement that the US carried out a “profitable” counterterrorism operation towards a major al-Qaida goal, including that “there have been no civilian casualties.”
The home Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned by a prime aide to senior Taliban chief Sirajuddin Haqqani, in keeping with a senior intelligence official. The official additionally added that a CIA floor workforce and aerial reconnaissance carried out after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s dying. Planning for the operation started six months in the past, however intensified within the final two months, the official stated.
Over the 20-year struggle in Afghanistan, the U.S. focused and splintered al-Qaida, sending leaders into hiding. However America’s exit from Afghanistan final September gave the extremist group the chance to rebuild. U.S. navy officers, together with Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Employees, have stated that al-Qaida was attempting to reconstitute in Afghanistan, the place it confronted restricted threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Navy leaders have warned that the group nonetheless aspired to assault the U.S.
The 2001 assaults on the World Commerce Heart and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. However he probably may by no means have carried it out with out his deputy. Bin Laden supplied al-Qaida with charisma and cash, however al-Zawahri introduced techniques and organizational expertise wanted to forge militants right into a community of cells in nations world wide.
Their bond was cast within the late Nineteen Eighties, when al-Zawahri reportedly handled the Saudi millionaire bin Laden within the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains round them.
Zawahri, on the FBI’s Most Needed Terrorist record, had a $25 million bounty on his head for any data that may very well be used to kill or seize him.
Biden deliberate to talk from the balcony off the White Home Blue Room as he stays in isolation within the residence whereas he continues to check optimistic for COVID-19.
Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden plotted the 9/11 assaults that introduced many atypical Individuals their first data of al-Qaida.
Photographs from the time typically confirmed the glasses-wearing, mild-looking Egyptian physician sitting by the aspect of bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri had merged his group of Egyptian militants with bin Laden’s al-Qaida within the Nineties.
“The robust contingent of Egyptians utilized organizational know-how, monetary experience, and navy expertise to wage a violent jihad towards leaders whom the fighters thought of to be un-Islamic and their patrons, particularly the US,” Steven A. Prepare dinner wrote for the Council on International Relations final yr.
When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s secure haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its management within the Afghan-Pakistan border area and put in allies as lieutenants in key positions.
He additionally reshaped the group from a centralized planner of terror assaults into the pinnacle of a franchise chain. He led the assembling of a community of autonomous branches across the area, together with in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Asia. Over the following decade, al-Qaida impressed or had a direct hand in assaults in all these areas in addition to Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, together with the 2004 prepare bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London.
Extra just lately, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen proved itself able to plotting assaults towards U.S. soil with an tried 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an tried bundle bomb the next yr.
However even earlier than bin Laden’s dying, al-Zawahri was struggling to keep up al-Qaida’s relevance in a altering Center East.
He tried with little success to coopt the wave of uprisings that unfold throughout the Arab world beginning in 2011, urging Islamic hard-liners to take over within the nations the place leaders had fallen. However whereas Islamists gained prominence in lots of locations, they've stark ideological variations with al-Qaida and reject its agenda and management.
However, al-Zawahri tried to pose because the Arab Spring’s chief. America “is dealing with an Islamic nation that's in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad,” he stated in a video eulogy to bin Laden, carrying a white gown and turban with an assault rifle leaning on a wall behind him.
Al-Zawahri was additionally a extra divisive determine than his predecessor. Many militants described the soft-spoken bin Laden in adoring and virtually non secular phrases.
In distinction, al-Zawahri was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics inside the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his movies. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central management have been postpone, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive.
Some militants whose affiliation with bin Laden predated al-Zawahri’s all the time noticed him as an smug intruder.
“I've by no means taken orders from al-Zawahri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of many community’s prime figures in East Africa till his 2011 dying, sneered in a memoir posted on line in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anybody however our historic management.”
Talking on Aug. 31, 2021, after the final U.S. troops left Afghanistan, Biden stated the U.S. wouldn't let up on its battle towards terrorism in that nation or elsewhere.
“We are going to preserve the battle towards terrorism in Afghanistan and different nations,” he stated. “We simply don’t must battle a floor struggle to do it.” Previewing the strike that might happen 11 months later, Biden stated on the time, “We've got what’s referred to as over-the-horizon capabilities, which suggests we will strike terrorists and targets with out American boots on the bottom — or only a few, if wanted.”
There have been rumors of al-Zawahri’s dying on and off for a number of years. However a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida chief praising a Indian Muslim girl who had defied a ban on carrying a hijab, or headband. That footage was the primary proof in months that he was nonetheless alive.
A press release from Afghanistan’s Taliban authorities confirmed the airstrike, however didn't point out al-Zawahri or some other casualties.
It stated it “strongly condemns this assault and calls it a transparent violation of worldwide rules and the Doha Settlement,” the 2020 U.S. pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.
“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the previous 20 years and are towards the pursuits of the US of America, Afghanistan, and the area,” the assertion stated.
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Related Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, Ellen Knickmeyer, Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani and Darlene Superville in Washington; Rahim Faiez in Islamabad; and Lee Keath in Cairo contributed reporting.
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