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Mohamed Salah al-Din al-Halim Zaidan commonly known by his nom de guerreSaif al-Adel is a former Egyptian Army officer and explosives expert who is widely understood to be the de facto leader of al-Qaeda. Al-Adel fought the Soviets as an Afghan Arab before becoming a founding member of the al-Qaeda organization. He is a member of Al-Qaeda's Majlis al-Shura and has headed the organization's military committee since the death of Muhammad Atef in 2001. He is currently known to live in Iran along with several other senior members of the group.
On 13 January 2006 the Central Intelligence Agency fired missiles into the Pakistani village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal area, near the Afghan border, killing at least 18 people. United States officials later admitted that no al-Qaeda leaders perished in the strike and that only local villagers were killed. The attack purportedly targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, second-in-command of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden, who was thought to be in the village.
Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri was a chemist and alleged top bomb maker for al-Qaeda and part of Osama bin Laden's inner circle. The United States had a $5 million bounty on his head. Although reportedly killed in a U.S. attack in January 2006, he survived and intelligence officials believe he went on to attempt to resurrect al-Qaeda's program to develop or obtain weapons of mass destruction. On 28 July 2008, Mursi was killed in an American drone attack in South Waziristan, Pakistan.
Maulvi Faqir Mohammed is an Islamist militant and, until March 2012, a deputy leader of the Pakistani Taliban umbrella group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan. He was reported as killed on 5 March 2010 during a helicopter gunship attack on militants by the Pakistani military although he denied the reports as false. In July 2011, he resurfaced on the air broadcasting radio shows out of Afghanistan. He was captured in Afghanistan on 17 February 2013, and released by the Afghan Taliban in 2021.
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The Khorasan group, sometimes known simply as Khorasan, is an alleged group of senior al-Qaeda members operating in Syria. The group is reported to consist of a small number of fighters who are all on terrorist watchlists, and coordinates with al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria. At an intelligence gathering in Washington, D.C., on 18 September 2014, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated that "in terms of threat to the homeland, Khorasan may pose as much of a danger as ISIS."
United States drone strikes in Yemen started after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States, when the US military attacked the Islamist militant presence in Yemen, in particular Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula using drone warfare.
Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi was a senior leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) based in Yemen. Al-Ansi appeared in many of AQAP's propaganda videos, claiming the kidnap of US photojournalist Luke Somers and the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. On 7 May 2015, AQAP announced that al-Ansi was killed in a US drone strike.
Abdullah Abd al-Rahman Muhammad Rajab Abd al-Rahman, known as Ahmad Hasan Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, was an Egyptian al-Qaeda leader who has been described as the general deputy to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.
On July 31, 2022, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the Salafi jihadist group al-Qaeda, was killed by a United States drone strike in Kabul, Afghanistan.
References
- ↑ Tim Lister (September 28, 2010). "Top al Qaeda commander killed in drone strike". CNN. Archived from the original on November 5, 2012. Retrieved February 5, 2014.
- ↑ Bill Roggio (September 28, 2010). "US kills al Qaeda's leader for Afghanistan and Pakistan in Predator strike: Report" . Retrieved February 5, 2014.
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