The Al-Qaeda mastermind behind one of the world's deadliest terror plots spent his final days living the high life in a luxurious Kabul suburb before being blasted off his balcony by two CIA "ninja" missiles.
Osama bin Laden's co-conspirator Ayman al-Zawahiri spent much of his life living covertly in Afghanistan's rugged and unforgiving mountains after becoming one of America's most wanted men for his role in planning the devastating 9/11 attacks.
But in his final months, he was confined to an upscale neighbourhood of Kabul where some of the Taliban's most senior leadership also reside.
Two hellfire missiles from a US drone blasted the 71-year-old off his balcony on Sunday morning, US President Biden revealed to reporters today.
No civilians were harmed in the operation, with the Egyptian surgeon's own family also spared in the strike.
Unverified pictures on social media showed a pink building with its windows shattered and blown out.
The two-to-three storey compound sat behind fences topped with rolls of barbed wire and ringed with trees in Sherpoor - a quiet and leafy part of the Afghan capital.
The neighbourhood contains large houses where former Afghan general and ethnic Uzbek strongman Abdul Rashid Dostum had lived, among other key Taliban dignitaries.
The area - which once stood empty and derelict while owned by Afghanistan's Defence Ministry - was recently converted into an upmarket community of mansions, according to the Washington Post.
Some houses have swimming pools in their attached gardens and US and NATO embassies are within just a few miles of the area.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a woman who lives in the local area said she and her family-of-nine darted to the safe-room of their home after hearing a blast over the weekend.
When she later went to the rooftop, she saw no commotion or chaos and assumed it was some rocket or bomb attack - which are not uncommon in Kabul.
The Taliban confirmed an air strike on a residential house in the Sherpoor area of Kabul but said there were no casualties.
Zawahiri moved to a "very safe place" in Kabul a few months after the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in August last
year, a senior leader of the radical group said on Tuesday on the condition of anonymity.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid condemned the drone strike and called it a violation of "international principles".
The senior Taliban leader said Zawahiri spent most of his time in the mountains of Helmand province's Musa Qala district
after the government was overthrown in 2001 when the United States sent troops to the country.
He said Zawahiri kept a low profile there but went in and out of Pakistan's border regions several times.
Pakistan's foreign office did not respond to questions about Zawahiri's reported movements in and out of Pakistan.
Al-Zawahiri became the terror group's figurehead a month after the notorious bin-Laden was shot dead by US Marines in his compound in Pakistan.
He was rumoured to be in ill health in his later years and would only appear occasionally by releasing essays and broadcasting vitriolic sermons.
Longtime observers of the terror group say it was Zawahiri who provided the scheming force behind much of the group's biggest endeavours, including attempts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
Despite his intellectual power and ambition, he was lacking in personal charisma and was responsible for an organisation in decline, with its many offshoots and troubles battling factions of the Islamic State in countries like Syria.
In January, 2006, CIA-operated Predator drones fired missiles at a house in Damadola, a village in the Pakistani tribal region of Bajaur, in the belief that Zawahiri was visiting. He was not but at least 18 villagers were killed.
Other Taliban sources said the group gave the "highest-level security" to Zawahiri in Kabul but he was largely inactive operationally and needed the Taliban's permission to move.
A Kabul police official described Sherpoor as Kabul's "most safe and secure neighbourhood" and that the drone strike there
was a "great shock".
He said influential people from the former governments of Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani had built spacious houses in Sherpoor. Senior Taliban leaders and their families now lived there, the official said.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon, helped coordinate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in the United
States.
Though largely thought to be bin-Laden's deputy, it was al-Zawhiri who served as the brains behind the entire operation.
Before merging his own militant organisation with al-Qaeda, he pioneered a form of attack which featured the indiscriminate killing of innocents.
In a 1998 manifesto, he wrote: " To kill Americans and their allies - civilian and military - is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in every country in which it is possible to do it."
A US official said they identified that Zawahiri's family - his wife, his daughter and her children - had relocated to a house in Kabul and subsequently identified him at the same location.
Officials were not aware of him leaving it and on multiple times they identified him on its balcony - where he was ultimately struck.
He was appointed leader of Al Qaeda a month after bin Laden was shot dead by US forces at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
According to the FBI's most wanted list, Al-Zawahiri had a £20.4million bounty over his head.
Speaking on August 31, 2021, after the last US troops left Afghanistan, Mr Biden said the US would not let up on its fight against terrorism in that country or elsewhere as it continues targets Al-Qaeda.
“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, Mr 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.”
Al-Zawahiri was a physician and the founder of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).
According to the FBI, the organisation opposed the secular Egyptian Government and sought to overthrow it through violent means.
He moved to Jeddah in the 1980s, where he met bin Laden. In around 1998, the EIJ, led by Al-Zawahiri, merged with Al Qaeda.
