Al Qaeda chief Ayman al Zawahiri, the successor of Osama bin Laden, was killed in a strike in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden will address the nation to provide an update on the “successful counterterrorism operation,” according to the White House.
Al Zawahiri was killed on Saturday night when his Kabul safe house was struck by two Hellfire missiles, according to a senior administration official. His family, who was also in the house, was not injured in the blast, and there were no additional casualties.
The official also accused the Taliban of knowing about al Zawahiri’s presence at the safe house and said officials quickly moved the rest of his family from the house after the strike, which the official said was an indication that they were attempting to cover up his presence there.
Biden had first been given briefings on a possible strike back in May, the official said, detailing the complexity and time that goes into such an attack.
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Al Zawahiri had previously served as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998. The two met during the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s.
It’s the first known U.S. strike of its type since U.S. forces pulled out of Afghanistan last August.
The anniversary of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan will come later this month. Biden assured the public at the time that Washington would be able to deal with terrorist threats from Afghanistan without a major military presence in the country.
“We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries,” Biden said last year. “We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it. We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed.”
The official added, “[Biden] promised that we would establish a capacity from outside the country to identify and address terrorist threats to Americans. He made good on that with this action, as U.S. forces showed extraordinary capacity to build an intelligence picture on the world’s most wanted terrorist and then take precise action to remove him from the battlefield.”
The 20-year war in Afghanistan began after the Taliban government refused to hand over planners of the 9/11 terrorist attacks hitting New York City and the Pentagon in 2001. The U.S. had wanted the al Qaeda leaders in response to the deadliest attack ever carried out on American soil.
The Taliban regained power following the fall of Kabul as the U.S. withdrawal was taking place.
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Former President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s death from the White House in 2011, when Biden was vice president. People poured into the streets of Washington, D.C., to celebrate.
“If you are looking for a bumper sticker to sum up how President Obama has handled what we inherited, it’s pretty simple: Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” Biden declared at the Democratic National Convention the following year.
Mike Brest contributed to this report.
