US watched al-Qaeda chief Zawahiri for months before ‘tailored air strike’ on Kabul hideout
- US officials described intelligence and planning to kill al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri
- US constantly monitored Kabul hideout to understand occupants’ ‘pattern of life’ before strike
US officials had built a scale model of the safe house where Zawahiri had been located, and brought it into the White House Situation Room to show President Joe Biden. They knew Zawahiri was partial to sitting on the home’s balcony.
They had painstakingly constructed “a pattern of life”, as one official put it. They were confident he was on the balcony when the missiles flew, officials said.
Years of efforts by US intelligence operatives under four presidents to track Zawahiri and his associates paid dividends earlier this year, Biden said, when they located Osama bin Laden’s long-time No 2 – a co-planner of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US – and ultimate successor at the house in Kabul.
Bin Laden’s death came in May 2011, face to face with a US assault team led by Navy SEALs. Zawahiri’s death came from afar, at 6.18am in Kabul.
His family, supported by the Haqqani Taliban network, had taken up residence in the home after the Taliban regained control of the country last year, following the withdrawal of US forces after nearly 20 years of combat that had been intended, in part, to keep al-Qaeda from regaining a base of operations in Afghanistan.