(Washington) The target of the “successful counter-terrorist operation” in Afghanistan announced on Monday by a senior American official was the leader of Al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed over the weekend in a drone strike , according to US media.
Posted at 5:25 p.m.
Updated at 6:13 p.m.
Zawahiri, considered the mastermind of the September 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United States, took over as head of the terrorist organization after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011, killed by an American commando in Pakistan.
President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak at 7:30 p.m. for a televised address about a “successful counterterrorism operation,” according to the White House, which did not provide further details.
A senior US administration official also said that the United States over the weekend carried out a “counter-terrorism operation against a major target within al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan, without mentioning Ayman. al-Zawahiri.
INTELLIGENCE GROUP SITE PHOTO, PROVIDED BY AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Ayman al-Zawahiri
“The operation was successful and caused no civilian casualties,” this source told reporters.
According to American media, Ayman al-Zawahiri may have been killed by a drone strike carried out in the Afghan capital Kabul by the CIA.
The State Department was offering up to $25 million in rewards for information leading to the arrest or conviction of the al-Qaeda leader.
This announcement comes almost a year after the chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, which had allowed the Taliban to regain control of the country twenty years later.
The United States had also announced in mid-July that it had killed the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, Maher al-Agal, during a drone strike, an operation which had “considerably weakened the capacity of the ‘ISIS to prepare, finance and conduct its operations in the region,’ according to a US military spokesman.