The leader of Al-Qaeda, successor to Osama bin Laden, was killed this weekend during an anti-terrorist operation in Afghanistan, according to the Associated Press agency.
The United States has killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. The Egyptian had overseen the September 11, 2001 attacks alongside the group’s founder, Osama bin Laden. Zawahiri took over as head of the terrorist organization after the latter’s death in 2011.
” The operation was successful and caused no civilian casualties “, said a senior US official to reporters. President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak at 11:30 p.m. GMT on a ” successful counter-terrorism operation according to the White House, which did not provide further details.
According to American media, Ayman al-Zawahiri, 71, 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.
Inheriting in 2011 an organization that had lost its luster, Ayman al-Zawahiri had to multiply the ” franchises » and the allegiances of circumstances, from the Arabian Peninsula to the Maghreb, from Somalia to Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. At the end of 2020, sources had once given credit to rumors that he died of heart disease, but he then reappeared in a video.
The announcement of his death 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 “ significantly weakened IS’s ability to prepare, finance and conduct its operations in the region according to a US Army spokesman.
More information to come