WASHINGTON — An American drone strike killed Ayman al-Zawahri, a key plotter of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks who took over as the leader of Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden’s death, at an urban safe house in Afghanistan, President Biden announced on Monday night.
The early-morning strike in the heart of downtown Kabul over the weekend capped a 21-year manhunt for an Egyptian radical who more than anyone besides Bin Laden was deemed responsible for the deadliest foreign attack on the United States in modern times and never gave up targeting Americans.
“Now justice has been delivered and this terrorist leader is no more,” Mr. Biden said in a seven-minute nationally televised address from the White House. “We make it clear again tonight,” he added, “that no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”
American intelligence agencies tracked down al-Zawahri in Kabul earlier this year and then spent months determining that it really was him hiding out in a house in a crowded section of the Afghan capital. After receiving authorization from Mr. Biden a week ago, the C.I.A. fired two Hellfire missiles and killed al-Zawahri on a balcony of the house without killing anyone else, including members of his family or any nearby civilians, American officials said.
The death of one of America’s most vocal enemies after a long and maddening search that stretched out over a generation was a major victory for Mr. Biden at a time of domestic political trouble. But it raised immediate questions about the terrorist leader’s presence in Afghanistan a year after Mr. Biden withdrew all American forces, clearing the way for the Taliban to recapture control of the country. Al-Zawahri moved back to Afghanistan earlier this year, evidently believing he would be safe there, officials said.
The success of the first strike since the withdrawal without American forces actually on the ground will bolster Mr. Biden’s argument that the United States can still wage war against terrorist organizations without the major deployments of ground forces that characterized the first two decades after Sept. 11.
But one of the premises of the American withdrawal was undercut by the disclosure that al-Zawahri found shelter in Afghanistan even though the Taliban had committed not to provide a safe haven for Al Qaeda to launch further attacks against Americans as part of an agreement first struck by President Donald J. Trump and accepted by Mr. Biden.
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