By Mostafa Salem, Ehsan Popalzai, Paul P. Murphy and Ivana Kottasova | CNN
The Taliban have claimed they weren't conscious that al Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri was residing within the Afghan capital of Kabul the place the US stated he was killed in a drone strike over the weekend.
“The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has no details about Ayman al-Zawahiri’s arrival and keep in Kabul,” the Taliban stated in an announcement Thursday.
“The management of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has instructed the investigative and intelligence companies to conduct a complete and severe investigation into the assorted features of the incident,” the Taliban added.
US President Joe Biden introduced Monday that Zawahiri had been killed early Sunday by a US drone strike at a home in Kabul he had been residing in.
A senior US administration official stated senior Taliban figures from the Haqqani community had been conscious of the al Qaeda chief’s presence within the space and even took steps to hide his presence after the strike, proscribing entry to the protected home and quickly relocating members of his household, together with his daughter and her kids.
The home through which al-Zawahiri was hiding is within the Sherpur space of the Inexperienced Zone, the place many of the officers from the earlier Afghan authorities used to stay.
The Sherpur neighborhood was as soon as the positioning of an previous army base, however through the years of civil battle and the Taliban’s rule within the Nineteen Nineties it was left nearly unused.
In 2003, the Afghan protection ministry deserted it and the federal government divided it into greater than 50 plots, giving them to highly effective individuals together with authorities ministers and different high-ranking officers, plus warlords and drug lords. Their homes quickly gained the nickname “poppy palaces.”
After the autumn of the Ashraf Ghani authorities in August 2021, the vast majority of the homeowners of Sherpur homes fled the nation and their homes had been confiscated by the Taliban.