UA senior US administration official announced on Monday that the United States had carried out over the weekend a “counter-terrorism operation against an important target within Al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan. “The operation was successful and caused no civilian casualties,” this source told reporters.
The target of the “successful counterterrorism operation” in Afghanistan was al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who was killed over the weekend in a drone strike, according to US media. Zawahiri, considered the mastermind of the September 11 attacks which 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.
WASHINGTON (AP) — AP source: US weekend strike in Afghanistan killed top al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.
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Joe Biden must speak out
President Joe Biden is due to speak at 7:30 p.m. (2330 GMT) about a “successful counterterrorism operation”, according to the White House, which did not provide further details. 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.
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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.