Bin Laden’s son killed
Time, manner of death in US strike not announced
The White House said Saturday that Hamza bin Laden, a son of the late al-Qaida leader who had become a prominent figure in the organization, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation.
– The White House announced Saturday that Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden and an increasingly prominent figure in the terrorist organization al-Qaida, was killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
A statement issued in President Donald Trump’s name gave no details, such as when the younger bin Laden was killed or how the United States had confirmed his death. Administration officials would provide no more information beyond the three-sentence statement from the White House. American officials have said there are indications that the CIA, not the U.S. military, conducted the strike.
The White House statement said Hamza bin Laden’s death “not only deprives al-Qaida of important leadership skills and the symbolic connection to his father, but undermines important operational activities of the group.” It said Osama bin Laden’s son “was responsible for planning and dealing with various terrorist groups.”
The U.S. officials had suspected this summer that Hamza bin Laden was dead, based on intelligence reports and the fact that he had not been heard from in some time. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Fox News Channel in a late August interview that it was his “understanding” that Hamza bin Laden was dead.
The younger bin Laden had been viewed as an eventual heir to the leadership of al-Qaida, and the group’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, had praised him in a 2015 video that appeared on jihadi websites, calling him a “lion from the den of al-Qaida.” The U.S. government in February offered $1 million for help tracking down Hamza bin Laden as part of the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program. The department’s notice said he was married to a daughter of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an al-Qaida leader and Egyptian charged for his role in the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa. They were said to have two children, Osama and Khairiah, named after his parents.
He was named a “specially designated global terrorist” in January 2017, and he had released audio and video mesWASHINGTON sages calling for attacks against the U.S. and its allies. To mark one 9/11 anniversary, al-Qaida superimposed a childhood photo of him over a photo of the World Trade Center.
Video released by the CIA in 2017 that was seized during the 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden showed Hamza bin Laden with a trimmed mustache but no beard at his wedding. Previous images had only shown him as a child.
Since August 2015, Hamza had been featured in al-Qaida messages, delivering speeches on everything from the war in Syria to Donald Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip as president. But he hadn’t been heard from since a March 2018 message in which he threatened the rulers of Saudi Arabia.