Washington: US President Joe Biden said that “justice has been delivered” after al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan on Saturday.
“On Saturday, at my direction, the United States successfully conducted an airstrike in Kabul, Afghanistan that killed the emir of Al-Qaida Ayman al-Zawahiri. Justice has been delivered,” tweeted President Biden.
“He will never again, never again, allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens,” he added.
A US drone on Saturday killed Ayman al-Zawahri, who helped Osama bin Laden plot September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. According to reports, Ayman al-Zawahri is an Egyptian surgeon was deeply involved in the planning of 9/11 and he also acted as Osama Bin Laden‘s personal physician.
The strike was conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and was carried out by an Air Force drone. The official claimed that al-Zawahiri was the only person killed in the strike and that none of his family members was injured. He took over Al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011, and had a $25 million US bounty on his head. Senior members of the Taliban and Haqqani Network were aware of al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul before the drone strike, said the senior administration official.
Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to the United States who is now with the Hudson Institute, said that this operation shows that the US can still find identified terrorist leaders in Afghanistan.