AL QAEDA’S leader has been killed in a US drone strike, the Biden administration has announced.
Ayman Al-Zawahiri, 71, who founded the terror group behind the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, was taken out in a strike on the Afghan capital Kabul.
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Known as ‘The Doctor’, Al-Zawahiri was believed to have masterminded the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and was on the FBI‘s most wanted list.
The Al Qaeda chief, who took over from Osama bin Laden after he was killed in 2011, had a $25m bounty on his head.
A senior Biden official said in a state that the Egyptian-born terrorist was killed over the weekend in a “counterterrorism operation against a significant Al Qaeda target in Afghanistan”.
They added that “the operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties”.
President Biden is due to hold a press conference at 7.30pm Washington time (12.30am Tuesday BST) to discuss the “successful counterterrorism operation,” according to White House reporter for Real Clear News Philip Wegmann.
