Killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri

On 31 July 2022, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Salafi jihadist group al-Qaeda, was killed by a United States drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan. Al-Zawahiri had been one of the planners of the September 11 attacks against the United States and succeeded Osama bin Laden as leader of al-Qaeda after bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan on 2 May 2011.

The Central Intelligence Agency tracked and located al-Zawahiri months before the strike. U.S. intelligence had followed the movements of his family, learning they had relocated to a safe house in Sherpur, a Kabul neighborhood, after the Taliban's 2021 recapture of Afghanistan; al-Zawahiri himself later joined them there after relocating from Pakistan. Officials briefed President Biden on the plan in stages during 2022, using a scale model of the building constructed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency to minimize harm to other occupants. On 25 July, Biden received a final briefing at which involved officials unanimously approved the strike.

On 31 July 2022, at 6:18 a.m. local time, a U.S.-operated drone fired two AGM-114 Hellfire missiles — reportedly the R9X variant, a non-explosive, kinetic weapon designed to limit collateral damage — at al-Zawahiri while he stood on the balcony of the house. He was killed; other occupants of the house were unharmed.

News of the strike broke two days later, after intelligence confirmed al-Zawahiri's death. Biden publicly confirmed he had authorized the strike a week earlier, describing it as a "deliverance of justice." According to a senior American official, al-Zawahiri's family was subsequently moved by members of the Haqqani network, part of the Taliban government, which also attempted to cover up his death; the Taliban did not confirm the killing and characterized the operation as a strike on an empty residential house. Anti-American protests occurred in Afghanistan on 5 August 2022.

U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said the Taliban had violated the 2020 U.S.–Taliban withdrawal agreement by sheltering al-Zawahiri. International reactions were mixed: allied governments including Australia and Canada praised the operation, Saudi Arabia's foreign ministry condemned al-Zawahiri as a terrorist leader, and China's foreign ministry said counter-terrorism efforts should not infringe on other states' sovereignty. Legal scholars disagreed on the strike's legality under international law. Al-Qaeda had not publicly confirmed al-Zawahiri's death or named a successor as of February 2023, though the United Nations reported that many member states believed Saif al-Adel was the de facto successor.