Al Qaeda – Michmutters

Tag: Al Qaeda

Categories
US

Top Pakistan Taliban leader killed in Afghanistan roadside attack | Pakistan Taliban News

Top Pakistan Taliban leader killed in Afghanistan roadside attack | Pakistan Taliban News

Abdul Wali, also known as Omar Khalid Khorasani, was allegedly behind some of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan in recent years.

A late night roadside bombing in eastern Afghanistan has struck a vehicle carrying members of the Pakistan Taliban, killing a senior leader and three other members of the group, several Pakistani officials and the group said.

Abdul Wali, also known as Omar Khalid Khorasani, was a top commander of the Pakistan Taliban and was allegedly behind some of the deadliest attacks in recent years.

Wali’s vehicle was struck on Sunday night by a roadside bomb in the Afghan province of Paktika, along the border with Pakistan, according to Pakistani officials and the TTP members who spoke on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press news agency.

The three other men who were killed included his driver and two of his close aides, they said.

Wali’s death delivers a big blow to the armed group, known formally as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and comes a week after a US drone raid in Kabul killed al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the Sunday night killing of Wali, who was on the US State Department’s most-wanted list and carried a reward of up to $3m for information on his whereabouts.

Pakistan Taliban on Monday confirmed the killing and blamed Pakistani intelligence agents for it, without offering evidence or elaborating.

A longer statement from the TTP is expected later on Monday.

Wali is thought to have been close to al-Qaeda founding leader Osama bin Laden and al-Zawahiri but it was not immediately known if there was any link between the August 1 drone attack and Sunday night’s bombing.

In 2014, Wali broke away from TTP and formed his own group, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, which carried out some of the deadliest attacks in Pakistan, including a bombing in the eastern city of Lahore in 2016 that killed at least 75 people from the minority Christian community on Easter Sunday.

The group also claimed responsibility for killing two Pakistani employees of the US Consulate in the northwestern city of Peshawar in March 2016.

Khorasani later dissolved Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and rejoined the TTP in the group’s drive to reunify several alienated groups.

The US State Department described him as a former journalist and poet who studied at several religious schools in Pakistan.

There has been a fragile truth between Islamabad and the TTP for the past two months as peace talks brokered by the Afghan Taliban’s Haqqani network take place.

The TTP has launched armed attacks in Pakistan during the past 14 years, fighting for stricter enforcement of Islamic laws in the country, the release of their members who are in government custody and a reduction of the Pakistani military presence in the country’s tribal-dominated regions .

The group has killed nearly 80,000 Pakistanis in almost two decades of violence, according to official estimates.

Islamabad has demanded that the new Taliban rulers next door prevent armed groups from using Afghan territory for attacks inside Pakistan.

Before the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, Islamabad and Kabul often traded blame and accused each other of sheltering armed groups.

Pakistan says it has finished the construction of more than 93 percent of a fence along the border with Afghanistan to prevent cross-border attacks.

.

Categories
US

Biden’s COVID sequel: back on the balcony, dog for company

Biden's COVID sequel: back on the balcony, dog for company

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s back to the White House balcony and the Treaty Room for President Joe Biden as he contends with a “rebound” case of COVID-19.

Trapped in the White House for the second time in as many weeks, the president knows the drill this time: He’s got an office in the residence and his dog Commander to keep him company while he governs by Zoom and FaceTime.

Biden’s latest bout with COVID-19 came with a new wrinkle: how to announce a major counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan from isolation.

Biden, dressed in a dark suit and red tie, walked to a lecture that had been wheeled onto the balcony of the Blue Room on Monday evening and informed the American people of the killing of Ayman al-Zawahri, the top al-Qaida leader, in a US strike in Afghanistan over the weekend.

The White House allowed just one print reporter to watch Biden deliver his speech, by looking through a window in the adjacent Red Room. A TV cameraman filmed the president and a still photographer took photos — a smaller footprint than the group of journalists that is usually at the president’s appearances.

Biden’s initial COVID-19 diagnosis left him with a lingering cough and runny nose, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. His rebound case from him — labeled such because he tested positive on Saturday just three days after being cleared from isolation with two negative tests last Tuesday and Wednesday — has left him antsy about returning to a normal schedule.

Biden’s rebound disrupted a trip home to Wilmington, Delaware, to meet with first lady Jill Biden, who has been there since Biden’s initial diagnosis. A trip Tuesday to Michigan to promote a $280 billion high-tech manufacturing bill he intends to sign was also scuttled.

Instead, Biden is stuck in COVID-19 isolation through at least Thursday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, and perhaps longer under the White House’s stricter protocols, which require a negative test to return to work.

“He’s someone who likes to be out there with the American people,” said Jean-Pierre on Monday. “He’s looking forward to being out there again.”

White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor said in a Monday letter that the president “continues to feel well” this time around, even as he tests positive.

Shortly after Saturday’s announcement that he was returning to isolation, the president tweeted a picture of himself masked, tieless and signing a declaration that added individual assistance for flood survivors in Kentucky.

He followed up by tweeting a 12-second video of himself on a White House balcony with Commander.

“I’m feeling fine, everything is good,” said Biden, a pair of aviator sunglasses in his hand. “But Commander and I got a little work to do.”

Minutes later, he called Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough on FaceTime as he visited with people camping outside the US Capitol in a bid for health benefits for military veterans exposed to toxic substances from burn pits during their service.

Biden tweeted that he had planned to visit the group in person on Saturday before he tested positive again, but instead sent McDonough with a delivery of pizza. I have invited the advocates to the White House once he’s cleared by his doctors to receive visitors.

“It doesn’t stop him from doing his job and doing the work of the American people,” Jean-Pierre said of the president’s rebound infection.

During his course of isolation, Biden told reporters that his canine companion served as his alarm clock while the first lady was away.

“Matter of fact, my dog ​​had to wake me up this morning,” he said last Tuesday. “My wife’s not here. She usually takes him out in the morning while I’m upstairs working out. And so, I felt this nuzzle of my dog’s nose against my chest about five minutes to seven.”

Biden has been working from the ornate second-floor Treaty Room or stepping onto the adjacent Truman Balcony overlooking the South Grounds and the Washington Monument.

A limited number of essential staff are with him in the residence, including security and medical personnel and a small number of aides, who remain masked for their protection. Biden’s usual in-person meetings, including his daily national security briefing, have shifted to virtual formats.

Plans for enabling a president to work in isolation were first developed when then-President Donald Trump tested positive for COVID-19 in October 2020, which required him to be admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. As the highly infectious omicron variant spread and cases closed in around Biden, his administration refined plans for Biden to carry out his duties while isolating at the White House, according to two aides.

Biden, 79, was treated with the antiviral drug Paxlovid after he first tested positive on July 21. He tested negative for the virus last Tuesday and Wednesday, July 26 and 27, and was then cleared to leave isolation while wearing a mask indoors. His positive tests of him put him among the minority of those prescribed the drug to experience a rebound case of the virus.

The CDC says most rebound cases remain mild.

Jean-Pierre said 17 people initially identified as close contacts of Biden when he first tested positive, as well as six people deemed at risk from his rebound infection, have continued to test negative for COVID-19.

.

Categories
US

AP sources: US operation killed al-Qaida leader al-Zawahri

AP sources: US operation killed al-Qaida leader al-Zawahri

WASHINGTON (AP) — A CIA drone strike has killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in Afghanistan, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Current and former officials began hearing Sunday afternoon that al-Zawahri had been killed in a drone strike, but the administration delayed releasing the information until his death could be confirmed, according to one person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter .

White House officials declined to confirm al-Zawahri was killed but noted in a statement that the United States conducted a “successful” counterterrorism operation against a significant al-Qaida target, adding that “there were no civilian casualties.”

President Joe Biden is expected to discuss further details of the operation in a 7:30 pm EDT address to the nation.

An American ground team was present in Afghanistan to support the strike and has since pulled out, a senior intelligence official said.

Al-Zawahri’s loss eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-Qaida, first as Osama bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the United States, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the Sept. 11, 2001, suicide hijackings.

The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world.

Their bond was forged in the late 1980s, when al-Zawahri reportedly treated the Saudi millionaire bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains around them.

Biden planned to speak from the balcony off the White House Blue Room as he remains in isolation in the residence while he continues to test positive for COVID-19.

Speaking on Aug. 31, 2021, after the last US troops left Afghanistan, Biden said the US would not let up on its fight against terrorism in that country or elsewhere.

“We will maintain the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and other countries,” he said. “We just don’t need to fight a ground war to do it.” Previewing the strike that would occur 11 months later, Biden said at the time, “We have what’s called over-the-horizon capabilities, which means we can strike terrorists and targets without American boots on the ground — or very few, if needed. ”

There have been rumors of al-Zawahri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida leader praising an Indian Muslim woman who had challenged a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf. That footage was the first proof in months that he was still alive.

A statement from Afghanistan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-Zawahri or any other casualties.

It said it “strongly condemns this attack and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement,” the 2020 US pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces.

“Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region,” the statement said.

—-

Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor, James LaPorta, Zeke Miller and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Rahim Faiez in Islamabad contributed reporting.

.