Afghans doubt Al-Qaeda chief al-Zawahiri killed in Kabul

Kabul, Afghanistan (AFP):

Afghans say they doubt Al-Qaeda’s chief was killed in a drone strike on Kabul as announced by US President Joe Biden, saying they don’t believe Ayman al-Zawahiri was hiding in their midst.

“It’s just propaganda,” Fahim Shah, 66, a resident of the Afghan capital, told AFP. Late Monday, US President Joe Biden announced Zawahiri’s assassination, saying “justice has been delivered” to the Egyptian with a $25 million bounty on his head.

Biden said that US armed forces fired two Hellfire missiles from a drone flying above the Afghan capital, striking Zawahiri’s safe house and killing him.

“We have experienced such propaganda in the past and there was never anything in it,” Shah said. “In reality, I don’t think he was killed here.”

Kabul resident Abdul Kabir said he heard the strike on Sunday morning, but still called on the United States to prove who was killed.

“They should show to the people and to the world that ‘we had hit this man and here is the evidence’,” Kabir said. “We think they killed somebody else and announced it was the al-Qaeda chief… there are many other places he could be hiding — in Pakistan, or even in Iraq.”

Zawahiri’s assassination is the biggest blow to Al-Qaeda since US special forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, and calls into question the Taliban’s promise not to harbour militant groups.

Zawahiri was believed to be the mastermind who steered Al-Qaeda’s operations — including the 9/11 attacks — as well as bin Laden’s personal doctor.

News of his death comes a month before the first anniversary of the final withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, leaving the country in the hands of the Taliban insurgency that fought Western forces for two decades.

Under the Doha deal, the Taliban promised not to allow Afghanistan to be used again as a launchpad for international jihadism, but experts believe the group never broke ties with Al-Qaeda.

Jihadist monitor SITE said some militants were questioning the veracity of the report he had been killed, while others believed Zawahiri had achieved his desire of “martyrdom.”