According to media reports, the United States has killed the head of the al-Qaeda terrorist network, Aiman al-Zawahiri, in a drone attack in Afghanistan. A US government official initially said on Monday only that the US carried out an "anti-terrorist operation against a key al-Qaeda target in Afghanistan" over the weekend. He added: "The operation was successful and there were no civilian casualties."
According to US media such as the news channel CNN and the newspaper "New York Times", the target was al-Zawahiri. Accordingly, the drone attack could have been carried out by the US foreign intelligence service CIA. US President Joe Biden wanted to make a television speech about the operation in the evening (7:30 p.m. local time; Tuesday 1:30 a.m. CEST).
Al-Zawahiri had taken over the leadership of al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special forces in Pakistan in 2011. Al-Sawahiri is considered a key figure behind the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States that killed around 3,000 people. The United States put a $25 million bounty on his head.
The operation, in which al-Zawahiri is believed to have been killed, was carried out almost a year after the US and its western allies withdrew troops from Afghanistan. In the course of the withdrawal, the radical Islamic Taliban seized power in Afghanistan again and inflicted a great shame on the West.
A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban leadership said on Twitter on Monday that a US attack had hit a house in the Sherpur district of Kabul.
"The security and intelligence services of the Islamic Emirate have investigated the incident and found that the attack was carried out by American drones," spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said. He did not provide any information about the victims. He condemned the attack as "a clear violation of international principles".
A successful operation would allow the Biden administration to justify its controversial claim that the US would still be able to strike terrorist targets after US troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan.
