Top Al-Qaeda leader al-Zawahiri killed in Afghanistan by US drone strike — Biden to deliver speech on slaying

Top Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed over the weekend in Afghanistan while hiding out at the home of an Afghan government official and Taliban member, the New York Times reported.

According to reports, President Joe Biden, who was isolated with a rebound infection of COVID-19, authorized the strike against al-Zawahiri. Biden will address the nation at 7:30 p.m. EST Monday evening.

He is among the most pursued terrorists in the world after the slaying of Osama bin Laden, MSNBC reported.

The Times also reported that the operation was not a military one, and instead was conducted through the CIA. The government won't respond to questions about it, however.

Al-Zawahiri was among the top organizers of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Towers, the Washington Post described.

"Zawahiri was a senior adviser to bin Laden at the time of al-Qaeda’s first high-profile terrorist attacks, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in the capitals of Kenya and Tanzania that killed hundreds of people," said the report. "Three years later, working from al-Qaeda’s base in Afghanistan, he helped oversee the planning of what would become one of history’s most audacious terrorist attacks: the Sept. 11 strikes in New York and Washington."

Sept. 11 hijackers were sent to begin training in the U.S. while Zawahiri was in charge of following up on other terrorist attacks that aimed to weaken the U.S. economy.

"He launched an ambitious biological weapons program, establishing a laboratory in Afghanistan and dispatching disciples to search for sympathetic scientists as well as lethal strains of anthrax bacteria," said the Post.