Staff Reporter.
Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed over the weekend in a drone strike in a U.S. counterterrorism operation, President Joe Biden announced Monday night.
“He carved a trail of murder and violence against American citizens, American service members, American diplomats, and American interests,” . Biden said in his brief remarks from the White House balcony. “Now, justice has been delivered. And this terrorist leader is no more.”
The president said al-Zawahiri was killed in Kabul.
“After relentlessly seeking Zawahiri for years under Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump, our intelligence community located Zawahiri earlier this year,” Biden said. “He had moved to downtown Kabul to reunite with members of his immediate family.”
The U.S. government had multiple, independent sources confirming al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts at a safehouse, a senior administration official told reporters on a call Monday evening. The strike was a result of careful, patient and persistent work by counterterrorism officials over the course of months and years, the official said.
The president said that after he considered “clear and convincing evidence” of al-Zawahiri’s location, he “authorized a precision strike that would remove him from the battlefield once and for all.” He gave his final approval to “go get him” one week ago.
Al-Zawahiri was ultimately taken out by a drone at 9:48 p.m. ET Saturday, while he was on the balcony of the safehouse, and his family members were in different rooms of the house.
“None of his family members were hurt and there were no civilian casualties,” the president said. The U.S. government has a high level of confidence that no one else was killed in the strike, according to the senior administration official.
The senior administration official said the president received regular updates as the U.S. government zeroed in on al-Zawahiri. Once the safehouse was located, the president wanted to understand more about the layout of the safehouse’s doors and windows to avoid other casualties. In a July 25 meeting, the president authorized a precise, tailored air strike that would minimize civilian deaths as much as possible, the senior administration official said.
With al-Zawahiri’s death, all of the top plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks are now either dead or captured.
The FBI updated its “Most Wanted Terrorist” poster Monday with al-Zawahiri’s status: “Deceased.”
The president spoke of his visits to Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and Ground Zero in New York last year on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and he said that seeing the names of those who died in the attack etched in bronze was a reminder of the vow Americans made to “never forget.”
Biden said his hope was that the action taken against al-Zawahiri “will bring one more measure of closure” to those who lost loved ones on 9/11.
The strike came nearly one year after U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, which was not lost on the president. The Biden administration has long made the argument that it can continue to address terrorist threats to the American people without boots on the ground in Afghanistan, from “over the horizon.”
Source:News Agencies.