Globaltimes  Ayman al-Zawahri, shown here in 1998, was described by an Obama administration official as “the ideological leader of the modern global jihad.”AP Photo/Mazhar Ali Khan |
| A U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan killed Ayman al-Zawahri, the top leader of Al Qaeda and a key plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He took over Al Qaeda after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. |
| “Justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more,” President Biden said in an address to Americans last night. |
| The strike, in the heart of downtown Kabul over the weekend, was the first U.S. attack in Afghanistan since American forces left the country last year. The Taliban condemned the operation. Here are live updates. |
| Zawahri, 71, was born in Egypt and trained as a surgeon before becoming a jihadist. He profoundly shaped Al Qaeda and its terrorist movements with his writing and arguments. He was widely depicted as the organization’s intellectual spine, but his death is likely to have little impact on the group’s day-to-day operations. |
| The strike is a significant victory for the Biden administration’s counterterrorism efforts, bolstering the president’s argument that the U.S. can still fight terrorist organizations without major deployments of ground forces. |
| The U.S. claims that the Taliban violated a peace agreement by letting al-Zawahri into Afghanistan. The Taliban claims the U.S. violated a peace agreement by conducting the strike. |
