KABUL: Many Afghans portrayed shock or question on Tuesday (Aug 2) that Al-Qaeda’s chief had been killed in Kabul by an United States drone strike , saying they could not believe Ayman al-Zawahiri had been hiding in their midst.
“It’s just propaganda, ” Fahim Shah, 66, a resident of the Afghan funds, told AFP.
Late on Monday, US President May well Biden announced Zawahiri’s assassination, saying “justice has been delivered” to the Egyptian with an US$25 million bounty on his head.
The senior US public said that the 71-year-old was on the balcony of a three-storey home in the upmarket Sherpur neighbourhood when targeted with two Hellfire missiles shortly after dawn on Sunday.
“We have experienced such propaganda in the past plus there was never something in it, ” Shah said.
“In reality, I don’t believe he was murdered here. ”
The Taliban admitted earlier on Tuesday the fact that US had performed a drone hit, but gave no details of casualties : and did not name Zawahiri, who was considered a key plotter from the 9/11 attacks for the United States.
On Sunday, the interior ministry had denied reports of a drone strike, but Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid mentioned on Tuesday which was because an investigation was under way.
Kabul resident Abdul Kabir said that he heard the strike on Sunday morning, but still called around the United States to confirm who was killed.
“They should display to the people and to the world that ‘we had hit this man and here could be the evidence’, ” Kabir said.
“We think they killed somebody else and announced it was the Al-Qaeda chief… there are many other places he could be concealing – in Pakistan, or even in Iraq. ”