Ayman al-Zawahiri Killed in US Strike
Aug. 3rd, 2022 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerAl Qaeda terrorist leader and 9-11 attack planner Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed in a US drone strike at his home in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Sunday. The strike, which was months in planning, was notable for its lack of collateral damage. Zawahiri was killed as he stood on a balcony of the building. No other residents of the building were harmed, the building itself was not collapsed, and nobody in the neighborhood was harmed.
Intelligence experts studied al-Zawahiri's movements, and those of people around him, and pinpointed his habit of spending time on a balcony of his building. He apparently hasn't left that building since moving to it earlier this year. His wife and children do run errands, though, and intelligence operatives found them using sophisticated counter-espionage techniques as they moved about the city. Anyway, the US targeted him with a drone strike as he stood on the balcony and killed him without harming family in the house or anyone in the neighborhood.
Zawahiri had been the leader of al Qaeda since the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Prior to that he was the terrorist organization's second-in-command, having joined it when he merged the group Islamic Jihad into it in the 1980s. Islamic Jihad, BTW, was the group that claimed responsibility for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
Intelligence experts studied al-Zawahiri's movements, and those of people around him, and pinpointed his habit of spending time on a balcony of his building. He apparently hasn't left that building since moving to it earlier this year. His wife and children do run errands, though, and intelligence operatives found them using sophisticated counter-espionage techniques as they moved about the city. Anyway, the US targeted him with a drone strike as he stood on the balcony and killed him without harming family in the house or anyone in the neighborhood.
Zawahiri had been the leader of al Qaeda since the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Prior to that he was the terrorist organization's second-in-command, having joined it when he merged the group Islamic Jihad into it in the 1980s. Islamic Jihad, BTW, was the group that claimed responsibility for the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981.
