Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri Cause of Death

The leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman Mohammed Rabie al-Zawahiri known simply as Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan by the US, President Joe Biden has confirmed.

Zawahiri was killed in a counter-terrorism operation carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Sunday (July 31, 2022).

Zawahiri took over the leadership of al-Qaeda following the killing of Osama Bin Laden in May 2011.

Zawahiri was also a senior member of Islamist organizations which led attacks in Asia, Africa, North America and Europe and in 2012, he called on Muslims to kidnap Westerners in Muslim countries.

Zawahiri was an Egyptian-born physician and theologian who was the leader of terrorist group al-Qaeda from June 2011 until his death by a drone strike on July 31, 2022.

In 1998, Zawahiri was listed as under indictment in the United States for his role in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings, a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the major East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya.

The attacks brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to international attention.

On October 10, 2001, Zawahiri appeared on the initial list of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s top 22 Most Wanted Terrorists, which was released to the public by U.S. President George W. Bush.

In early November 2001, the Taliban government announced they were bestowing official Afghan citizenship on him, as well as Bin Laden, Mohammed Atef, Saif al-Adl, and Shaykh Asim Abdulrahman.