Who is al qaedas number one

By Reuters Staff. Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle in the streets of Tehran on Aug. Reuters had been unable to corroborate that information. It was unclear what, if any, role the United States had in the killing of the Egyptian-born militant, the Times said.

Al Qaeda has not announced his death, Iranian officials have covered it up and no government has publicly claimed responsibility, the Times said. Then the messages became less frequent — and less significant — as al Qaeda faltered, its leadership decimated by drones and special operations raids.

Twice during the siege of Tora Bora in November , he was targeted but survived. One of his wives and two of his children died in one of the attacks.

Then in January , the CIA and Pakistani forces believed they had found him in the Pakistani village of Damadola and launched a volley of Hellfire missiles at him. Eleven jihadis were killed, but Zawahiri quickly released a video message showing he had survived.

In August of , there was another assault on caves in Tora Bora. Ultimately, even though their attacks left dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban dead, U. But Zawahiri lives on. According to an NBC News analysis, of the 10 members of the al Qaeda shura council who approved the attacks, Zawahiri is one of just four who haven't been killed or captured.

More telling is that seven possible replacements for bin Laden and Zawahiri have been killed since Zawahiri took over in , the most recent last summer. Nasir al-Wuhayshi, killed June 12, , had just been named Zawahiri's deputy when he was killed in a drone strike.

Since then, al Qaeda has not named a replacement, perhaps out of fear he will be targeted as well. In the five years since he was named bin Laden's successor, Zawahiri has faced crisis after crisis The big reason may very well be that Zawahiri, more of a theoretician, is not the charismatic figure that Bin Laden was and "never had his mojo," as the counter terrorism official noted. He has, according to U. One senior U. But the extremist group that once used Afghanistan as a staging base to attack the US 20 years ago may attempt to regenerate there, following the American withdrawal that has left the Taliban in power, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned on Thursday.

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