U.S. Drone Kills Al Qaeda Chief Ayman al-Zawahiri In Kabul

Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US strike in Afghanistan over the weekend, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, Michelle Price, Eric Beech, Alex Alper, Idrees Ali and Jeff Mason reported for Reuters.

Photo Insert: Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had been in hiding for years and the operation to locate and kill him was the result of "careful patient and persistent" work by the counter-terrorism and intelligence community.

Zawahiri had been in hiding for years and the operation to locate and kill him was the result of "careful patient and persistent" work by the counter-terrorism and intelligence community, a senior administration official told reporters.

Until the US announcement, Zawahiri had been rumored to be in Pakistan's tribal area or inside Afghanistan. The official said the US had been aware of a network that it assessed supported Zawahiri and following the US's withdrawal from Afghanistan, officials had been watching for indications of Al Qaeda's presence in the country.

Eventually, Zawahiri's family - his wife, his daughter, and her children - had relocated to a safe house in Kabul and the CIA subsequently identified Zawahiri at the same location. Intelligence officials grew more confident that they had correctly identified Zawahiri at the Kabul safe house and in early April started briefing senior officials.

Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, subsequently briefed President Joe Biden, who authorized the operation on July 25. "We were able to build a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation," the official said.

The Associated Press (AP) and other media outfits said the operation was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The strike involved a US drone, armed with two precision-guided Hellfire missiles, which were launched at 6:18 am Sunday, Kabul time. Zawahiri was "killed on the balcony," the official said, Paul Handley reported for the Agence France-Presse (AFP.)

The missiles appear not to have been ordinary Hellfires, whose high explosives could have destroyed the home.

hotographs of the building show only a few windows on one floor blown out, and the rest intact. That points to the likely use of a non-explosive version of the Hellfire, the R9X, which deploys a series of knife-like blades from its fuselage and shreds its target but leaves nearby people and objects intact.

The so-called "flying ginsu" missile has been used a half-dozen or more times by US forces to kill other jihadist group leaders without hurting bystanders.

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