al-Qaeda

His death puts an end to a years-long search for the Egyptian doctor who helped plot the September 11 attacks against the US.

Now we make it clear again tonight that 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 a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. “The mission was a success. Going forward, we will continue to hold them accountable for their actions,” the US official said. People around the world no longer need to fear this vicious and determined killer.” US officials had suspected he was hiding out in Pakistan, but his return to Kabul - where he was living in a safe house with his family for months - raises questions about the Taliban’s commitment to keeping al-Qaeda out of the country.

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan on Sunday. This is what we know about how it unfolded.

Prior to the formation of Al Qaeda, Zawahiri led the group Islamic Jihad in Egypt in the 1990s, and was a leading figure in a campaign to overthrow the government and set up a purist Islamic state. "Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region," the statement said. Family members of Zawahiri, including his daughter and her children, were in the house at the time of the attack but no others had been killed, according to US officials. On this day, a US drone fired two Hellfire missiles at the 71-year-old Al Qaeda leader as he stood, according to US officials speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the strike. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan on Sunday, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder, Osama bin Laden, was killed by a US operation in 2011. At sunrise on Sunday, Zawahiri came outside on the balcony of a house in Kabul, Afghanistan, and apparently lingered there, as US intelligence noted he often did.

Sunday's drone strike is the first known CIA counterterrorism operation since Kabul fell to the Taliban last year.

We have no indication that civilians were harmed in this strike," the official added. Sunday's drone strike is the first known CIA counterterrorism operation since Kabul fell to the Taliban last year. "We made it clear again tonight that 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," Biden added. - "We made it clear again tonight that 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," Biden said.

The doors of jihad opened for Ayman al-Zawahiri as a young doctor in a Cairo clinic, when a...

He promoted the use of suicide bombings to become al-Qaeda's hallmark. He merged his own militant cell with others to form the group Islamic Jihad and began trying to infiltrate the military. Then came the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat by Islamic Jihad militants. Bin Laden provided al-Qaeda with charisma and money, but Zawahiri brought tactics and organisational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells around the world. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions. It was mainly pro-democracy activists who toppled Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak, the longtime goal Zawahiri failed to achieve.

President Joe Biden will speak at 7:30 p.m. ET on "a successful counterterrorism operation" against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the White House said Monday. "Over ...

After his release, he made his way to Pakistan, where he treated wounded mujahadeen fighters who fought against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. At one point, he narrowly escaped a US onslaught in the rugged, mountainous Tora Bora region of Afghanistan, an attack that left his wife and children dead. Zawahiri and bin Laden gloated after they escaped a US cruise missile attack in Afghanistan that had been launched in retaliation. For decades, he was the mastermind of attacks against Americans," Biden said. No American personnel were on the ground in Kabul at the time of the strike. Around the time of Kabul's fall, Biden indicated that there would be enduring US military capabilities -- namely, drones -- to target terrorists.

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.”

The US has declared justice after more than 20 years hunting Ayman al-Zawahiri. But a battle with extremism will go on.

It was the first US drone strike inside Taliban-ruled Afghanistan since the withdrawal of American troops last year. A recent United Nations report warned that al-Qaeda and Islamic State-Khorasan Province are gaining in strength in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and could potentially pose a threat to world outside. For its part, the Taliban condemned the US drone attack on Afghan soil and called it a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

Intelligence agencies had "relentlessly" sought Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri under previous administrations, US President Joe Biden says.

Prior to the formation of Al Qaeda, Zawahiri led the group Islamic Jihad in Egypt in the 1990s, and was a leading figure in a campaign to overthrow the government and set up a purist Islamic state. "Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region," the statement said. Family members of Zawahiri, including his daughter and her children, were in the house at the time of the attack but no others had been killed, according to US officials. On this day, a US drone fired two Hellfire missiles at the 71-year-old Al Qaeda leader as he stood, according to US officials speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the strike. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan on Sunday, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder, Osama bin Laden, was killed by a US operation in 2011. At sunrise on Sunday, Zawahiri came outside on the balcony of a house in Kabul, Afghanistan, and apparently lingered there, as US intelligence noted he often did.

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.

A senior US official had told Reuters the US had conducted a successful operation against a 'significant al-Qaida target'

The official added that al-Zawahiri’s family members were present in other parts of the safe house at the time of the strike, were not targeted and were unharmed. The safe house used by al-Zawahiri is now empty.” He had a $25m bounty on his head. The official continued: “Two Hellfire missiles were fired at Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was killed. The strike was carried out at 9:48pm eastern time on Saturday by an unmanned aerial vehicle. “At the conclusion of the meeting, the president authorised a precise, tailored airstrike on the condition that a strike minimised to the greatest extent possible the risk of civilian casualties,” the official said in a background briefing call.

Ayman al-Zawahiri's death at the hands of a US drone strike has raised questions about who will replace him as the leader of al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda has only ever had two leaders and the current status of its governing Shura (council), which had a critical role in the election of Zawahiri, is hard to discern. Its affiliates in Central Asia such as the Turkestan Islamic Party also retain a presence. Some former al Qaeda insiders say that senior Egyptian and Saudi figures within the organization often looked down on African affiliates. For much of his adult life he has lived and breathed al Qaeda. His ideology is prudent, and he has excellent awareness." Adel was a loyal servant to Osama bin Laden before acting as al Qaeda's interim leader in 2011.

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.

Popular anger could push regime to retaliate and further turn away from the West in favor of hard-line religion.

“The Taliban are stuck now, and it’s their own fault,” he said. There is deep-seated animosity here toward the United States, which intensified after U.S. troops withdrew last year and the war economy collapsed, leaving millions of Afghans jobless. Several leaders of the hard-line Haqqani network, long denounced by U.S. officials for directing high-profile terrorist attacks, hold powerful positions in the regime. The relationship they have with al-Qaeda and other jihadi groups remains very strong,” said Asfandyar Mir, an expert on Islamic extremism at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. “I think we should brace for impact.” For a whole year, there have been no jobs, no business, no activity. Faiz Zaland, who teaches governance and political science at Kabul University, expressed frustration with the Taliban for failing to anticipate the risks of bringing al-Zawahiri to the capital and concern that the U.S. attack had doomed chances for the moderate elements in the regime to compete with the hard line religious figures at the top.

The BBC's security correspondent looks at what can be expected from al-Qaeda now its leader has been killed.

It was here that he lived for five years under the Taliban's protection from 1996-2001. In 2000 it rammed a tiny speedboat packed with high explosives into the side of the USS Cole in Aden harbour, killing 17 sailors and crippling this billion-dollar warship. Al-Qaeda remains at heart a Middle Eastern terror group. Despite the clues missed by Washington, the attacks succeeded partly because the CIA was not sharing its secrets with the FBI and vice versa. In fact, what is al-Qaeda and is it even relevant any more in 2022? US and Western intelligence agencies are now far better informed, they collaborate more and their recruitment of informants from inside al-Qaeda and ISIS have meant fewer successful terror attacks.

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 ...

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That Zawahiri's killing went so quietly suggests that the cultural and political behemoth that was the war on terror had long preceded him into the grave.

The great tragedy and crime of the war on terror was that the United States decided to take revenge for it on entire civilian populations of countries like Iraq and Afghanistan, who bore no guilt for the 9/11 attacks. Jihadist terrorism may yet make a comeback, but I doubt it will do so anytime soon in a manner that affects Americans the way that September 11 did. The killing of Zawahiri may provide a modicum of justice for the victims of the September 11 attacks. While it’s hard to find 9/11 perpetrators who paid for the attack in any way, millions of others have died, been wounded, or driven from their homes because of U.S. military actions following the attacks. The victory of the Afghan Taliban over the U.S. military and its allies in Afghanistan taught an important lesson to Islamists around the world. Only five of the hundreds of men held at the notorious Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp were put on trial for 9/11; they remain there, their cases stalled in pretrial hearings. This won’t be the last drone strike or raid that the U.S. carries out in the Middle East, but the killing of Zawahiri marks the close of a particular chapter in American history. The United States is now preoccupied with a deadly war in Ukraine, as well as a growing rivalry with China that is likely to put far more strain on its resources than Al Qaeda ever did. By noon, the Zawahiri news had been pushed off the top of the New York Times’s website by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan and a Style section story about an iconic New York City guitar teacher. International terrorism was always a departure for Islamist groups, whose focus even in carrying out foreign attacks was to effect changes back home. Unlike Osama bin Laden’s death more than a decade ago, which prompted an outpouring of street celebrations and chest-beating by U.S. politicians and national security elites, the reaction to Zawahiri’s demise has been noticeably muted. Whereas the Islamic State group carried out terrorist attacks against Western civilians that enraged foreign publics and justified crushing military responses, the Taliban laser-focused on the conflict on the ground at home against the Afghan central government, even cutting deals with the Americans to keep their troops out of the fray.

Speaking days after a U.S. drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahri, senior U.S. officials warned that America will not permit Afghanistan to become a haven for ...

“You are going to have to work directly with NGOs in the country. “But their behavior is that of a rogue regime and U.S. policy towards them should reflect that reality.” His presence in Pakistan, and the U.S. attack, further damaged an already frayed relationship between Islamabad and Washington. At the time, the militants had sheltered al-Zawahri’s predecessor, Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the attacks, and they refused to give him up to U.S. custody. There’s a strong sense in official and analytical circles that the Taliban leadership is not entirely united on every sensitive issue. “So their loyalties are to each other, not to some government in the capital.” He vowed that the U.S. would not allow Afghanistan to again become a haven for terrorists. Even if top officials in Kabul promise not to harbor international terrorists, Taliban and al Qaeda members’ long-standing relationships make it hard for the militants to deny one another shelter, a Biden administration official familiar with the issue said. Their ideology is aligned with a jihadist narrative,” said Kate Bateman, an Afghanistan specialist at the U.S. Institute of Peace. “They also betrayed the Afghan people and their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with the international community.” “They simply can’t be trusted and the risk is substantial that money released to them would find their way inevitably and directly into al Qaeda’s pockets.” Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan nearly a year ago, the country has slipped into a humanitarian crisis.

"The strike that killed Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is a major success of US counterterrorism efforts, a result of countless hours of intelligence ...

"There will be someone to come and replace him. "He carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens, American service members, American diplomats, and American interests," he said in a brief statement on the White House balcony. As Zawahiri joins bin Laden in death, a new era begins in the post-war relationship between the US and Afghanistan. "That place has been taken by the Islamic State and by other groups — in particular, the two Shabaabs — al-Shabaab in Somalia and al-Shabaab in Mozambique, who are some of the fastest-growing terrorist groups." "But there's a new generation of Al Qaeda leaders in the operational space who've come up over the last 20 years, including one of the sons of Osama bin Laden and a number of other, what you might call next-generation Al Qaeda leaders." He was shown a model of Zawahiri's safe house and asked detailed questions, including about the structural integrity of the building, apparently focused on "minimising the risk to civilians, including Zawahiri's family," according to the official. But to experts, it was a hallmark of just how emboldened Al Qaeda have become after the withdrawal of US troops in Afghanistan. The source claimed he was close to Zawahiri, prompting officials to set up a meeting in a secure location in Khost, Afghanistan, only to discover that the man was in fact a triple agent who had lured officials into a trap. For most of that time his whereabouts has been something of a mystery, with the leader linked to Pakistan's tribal area or in the sparsely populated remote area around the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Two years later, US authorities were on Zawahiri's trail once again, using a double agent in Pakistan to penetrate the core of Al Qaeda in the hopes of finding a path to the second-in-command. "He was not a military man by background, but he was one of the big brains in terms of being a strategic thinker within the Al Qaeda movement," counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen told the ABC. At exactly 6:18am in Kabul, as Zawahiri stood on the balcony of his safe house, the US Central Intelligence Agency was watching and waiting.

Ayman al-Zawahiri leaves behind a robust network of strategically aligned but tactically independent al-Qaeda affiliates operating in Africa, Asia, ...

The CIA’s pivotal role in bin Laden’s Zawahiri’s deaths shows the strengths and peerless capabilities of the CIA and the broader intelligence community. I am not implying that any of this intelligence work or the strike itself was easy, only that Zawahiri and his family were doing these things all in plain sight—that’s how secure he and the Taliban felt. Al-Qaeda under Zawahiri was deliberately playing a long game, content to quietly rebuild and regroup while the world focused on defeating the self-declared Islamic State and destroying its caliphate. This will undermine the Taliban’s efforts to negotiate with the United States to unfreeze the $9 billion in assets that Washington is holding. Both al-Shabaab and Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) have a robust presence in East Africa and the Sahel, respectively; al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is still fighting in Yemen; Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent has spread to Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Myanmar, and Pakistan; and Hurras al-Din remains Al-Qaeda’s stalking horse in the Levant. None of this would have been possible without Zawahiri. Even though the al-Qaeda affiliates have had enormous independence, they have also adhered to the group’s ideology and conformed to Zawahiri’s strategy. Zawahiri was critical to al-Qaeda’s survival in the decade since the 2011 killing of its previous leader, Osama bin Laden. He held the movement together through his force of personality and strategic vision, which was to allow the various al-Qaeda franchises to pursue their local and regional agendas and have complete tactical independence.

The U.S. search for Ayman al-Zawahri had spanned decades. His presence on a balcony at a safe house in Kabul presented an opportunity to strike.

A drone flown by the C.I.A. found al-Zawahri on his balcony. As options for a strike were developed, intelligence officials examined what kind of missile could be fired at al-Zawahri without causing major damage to the safe house or the neighborhood around it. On July 25, Mr. Biden, satisfied with the plan, authorized the C.I.A. to conduct the airstrike when the opportunity presented itself. He remained on the balcony for extended periods, which gave the C.I.A. a good chance to target him. For years al-Zawahri was thought to be hiding in the border area of Pakistan, where many Qaeda and Taliban leaders took refuge after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001. The C.I.A. plans called for it to use its own drones. After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the C.I.A. base in Khost Province became home to a targeting group dedicated to tracking both Bin Laden and al-Zawahri. It was one of the leads developed by the C.I.A. to track al-Zawahri that proved disastrous for the agency’s officers at that base, Camp Chapman. And a misstep during the chase, the recruitment of a double agent, led to one of the bloodiest days in the agency’s history. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive intelligence used to find al-Zawahri. U.S. officials quickly decided to target him, but the location of the house posed problems. For the agency, finding al-Zawahri would be a key test of that assertion. The hunt for al-Zawahri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, stretches back to before the Sept. 11 attacks.

The precision strike against Zawahiri, ensconced in a safe house in Kabul, was a master class in intelligence and operational capacity and an affirmation that ...

Killing Zawahiri won’t eliminate the threat from jihadi groups, but it does strengthen the argument that the presence of U.S. forces and bases on the ground, which comes at a severe cost, may well be the best way to guarantee maximum protection of the United States but not necessarily the only way. And none of this even begins to address an increasingly polarized nation, a dysfunctional political system, and the rise of white nationalist extremist groups and militias—all of which pose a much greater danger to America’s stability, democracy, security, and prosperity than any threat from al-Qaeda or other groups. Much of the president’s remarks announcing the strike on Monday centered on fostering the image of a strong president determined to protect Americans and deliver justice to those who have harmed them. Still, the threat to the United States from al-Qaeda in Afghanistan—or even IS-K—is not nearly acute as the challenges that ail the nation internally. While Americans more often than not want as little to do with foreign policy as possible, the announcement of the Zawahiri strike will help somewhat counter the chaotic images of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. A number of established al-Qaeda senior leaders in Africa and Iran could serve in the role, though it’s possible a struggle might ensue and a new, younger face could emerge. The strike against Zawahiri seems all the more impressive in view of the fact that the withdrawal had reportedly weakened U.S. cooperation with partners on the ground, undermined a sustainable foundation to collect intelligence, and eliminated in-country bases of operation. In any event, the Taliban is already reeling from international pressure and isolation, and it will face greater pressure to act against remaining al-Qaeda assts. The strike was a counter-argument to those who believed a permanent presence on the ground was essential to what President Joe Biden had declared in August 2021 was the only U.S. vital interest in Afghanistan: preventing a terror attack on the homeland. Whether the strike against Zawahiri is part of a trend line of stepped-up U.S. counter-terrorism activity remains to be seen. And IS-K—a key Taliban adversary with as many as 4,000 members—continues to operate. In the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan last August, critics charged that the United States would not be able to operate effectively without on-the-ground intelligence, including the deployment of special forces, however limited, to act against terror assets.