WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri, a key plotter of the Sept. 11 attacks, was killed in a CIA drone strike he ordered targeting the terrorist leader in Afghanistan.
One of the world’s most wanted terrorists, al-Zawahri helped oversee the 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, working closely with former al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, and had led the group over the last decade since bin Laden’s death.
The 71-year-old Egyptian was killed in a drone strike at 6:48 p.m. local time Saturday at a residential location in Kabul, which fell to the Taliban a year ago almost immediately after Biden ordered the last U.S. forces to withdraw — a development that many feared would lead to more terrorist activity in Afghanistan’s capital.
