More On: Ayman al-Zawahiri
More than $7 billion worth of US military equipment has been taken by the Taliban
White House: al-Zawahiri may have been in Afghanistan since last year
Al-Zawahiri was killed in the home of a Taliban lackey, who was once given a platform by the New York Times
Who could be Al-Qaeda's next terror chief ?
Ayman al-Zawahiri Killed: What is the box on table front of Biden in the Situation Room ?
The heir apparent to the al-Qaeda throne after tonight's confirmed death of Ayman al-Zawahiri is a canny, military-trained operative with experience killing British and American soldiers.
Saif al-Adel was an Egyptian who used to be in the army. In the late 1980s, he joined the terrorist group Maktab al-Khidamat, which later became al-Qaeda.
There, he met Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, who would later become his allies. He would soon join their separate group, the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).
We don't know much else about Saif al-Adel, who is one of the younger al-Qaeda leaders at around 60 years old.
Al-Adel was around 30 years old when he was in charge of the infamous "Black Hawk Down" operation in Mogadishu, Somalia, in which 19 American soldiers were killed and their bodies were dragged through the streets.
When two helicopters were shot down in the east Africa ambush, seven more people were killed. Two British soldiers, three Turks, and a Frenchman were among those killed.
Since Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011, al-Adel has become an even more important leader in the terror cell as it shrinks.
The only thing stopping him from becoming the next leader of al-Qaeda is that he is probably stuck in Iran and may have been there for the past 19 years.
In 2003, Iranian Ambassador to the UN Javad Zarif refused to confirm nor deny whether al-Adel was being held in the country.
He told ABC News that terrorists often have more than one passport, making it hard for the Iranian government to figure out who they are.
Charles Lister, a foreign policy analyst, said tonight that al-Adel might not be able to take the lead because he is geographically isolated. What's left of al-Qaeda is now based in Afghanistan, where it works with the Taliban.
Bill Roggio, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told Task and Purpose that al-Adel is still the "likely" candidate to take over the job.
Al-made-up Adel's name means "Sword of Justice." His real name is thought to be Mohammed Salah al-Din Zaidan.
Al-Adel was thought to not be as brainwashed by Islamist ideology as some of his al-Qaeda colleagues. He used his military training to rise to the top of the shadowy group after the September 11 attacks, when many of its top leaders killed themselves.
Al-Adel was actually against what members of the terror cell called the "Planes Operation."
But when bin Laden decided to do it, he helped plan the terrorist attack that killed the most people in history.
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and expert on counterterrorism, said last year that al-Adel would be "al-next Qaeda's leader." Soufan also said that Saif has a "poker face" and a "caustic tongue."
He was known to kidnap young soldiers in the middle of the night and beat them badly to toughen them up when he was training them.
Al-Adel has risen to the top of al-Qaeda because of his own skills and because the US killed his superiors in a brutal way.
Hamza, who was thought to be Osama's son and successor, was killed in 2019, and Abu Muhammad al-Masri, another senior strategist, was killed in 2020.
US intelligence says that Al-Adel is a suspect in the bombings of the US embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on August 7, 1998.
More than 4,500 people were hurt in the three East Africa explosions, and 244 people died. Twelve Americans were among the dead.
A $10 million reward has been put on al-head Adel's for information about him.
And now that the former leader al-Zawahiri has been killed, American terrorist hunters are likely to focus on Saif al-Adel.
Al-Zawahiri took over Al-Qaeda after Bin Laden was killed in 2011. He was killed by a US airstrike this evening in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The terrorist leader is thought to have led Al-Qaeda to become one of the biggest radical movements. He has been named as the mastermind behind the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, which killed almost 3,000 people.
At 15, the Egyptian spearheaded his own militant group, Jamaat al-Jihad, that championed large-scale attacks and the murder of civilians.
As it grew, he later merged it with Al-Qaeda in the 1990s, bringing this focus on indiscriminate killing to the terrorist group.
The 71-year-old was on the FBI's most-wanted terrorist list, having declared the US 'the far enemy', with a $25 million reward for information leading directly to him.
The surgeon led a terrorist lab developing biological weapons and was the force behind Al-Qaeda's ambition to gain nuclear weapons.
'To kill Americans and their allies — civilian and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in every country in which it is possible to do it, Al-Zawahiri wrote in a 1998 manifesto.
Three years later, he helped plan the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Al-Zawahiri planned more attacks all over the US and started a program in Afghanistan to make biological weapons. He sent out a group of followers to find deadly strains of anthrax and scientists who would work with him.
But the Egyptian gave up on the biological weapons lab after the US-backed military effort in Afghanistan that got rid of Al-allies Qaeda's in the Taliban.
It comes after the United States killed a top ISIS official and his deputy in northwest Syria with a drone strike at the beginning of July.
US officials said that the strike killed senior ISIS leader Maher al-Agal. They took credit for the daytime attack in the northern Syrian village of Khaltan.
Al-Agal was one of the top five leaders of the terrorist group. He was riding a motorcycle in the village when an American missile was sent to kill him.
Officials say that the attack also hurt another high-level ISIS member, but that person lived. The official, whose name was not given, was said to have been hurt.
The attack badly burned and cut up Al-body, Agal's which was taken to a hospital in Idlib.
The attack happened in the Jenderies district of Afrin, which is northwest of Aleppo and close to the border between Syria and Turkey.
Since March 2018, the war-torn area has been controlled by the Syrian National Army (SNA), which is backed by Turkey.
In January 2020, the United States carried out an airstrike that killed a leader of Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen after months of tracking him.
Qassim al-Rimi, 41, was killed in the January strike but officials had been waiting to confirm the information before making public statement.
In November, CIA personnel learned of al-Rimi's location from an informant. The government then started using surveillance drones to track him, according to an U.S. official who was briefed on the strike.
Local news in Yemen reports that the strike killed two militant suspects in the area of Wadi Abedah in central Yemen, but did not identify who those people were.
Al-Rimi is a veteran of the Queda training camps in Afghanistan and whose 'terrorist pedigree traces to the era before the September 11 attacks,' NYT reports.
He then returned to Yemen and was sentenced to five years in prison there for plotting to kill the American ambassador there.
Al-Rimi broke out of jail after only a year and quickly rose in the ranks of the Qaeda affiliate.
A $5million reward for any information leading to his capture was offered by the State Department. It was late doubled to $10million as al-Rimi was linked to numerous plots against the U.S.
In 2017, al-Rimi notably sent President Donald Trump an audio message taunting him for a Special Operations Forces raid on an al Qaeda compound in Yemen that led to the first military combat death under the Trump administration, CNN reports.
President Joe Biden confirmed the leader of ISIS was dead in February in what he described as a cowardly move to blow up himself and his family instead of facing justice for his terrorists acts.
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi set off a bomb that killed himself as well as his wife and two children during a raid by U.S. commandos on a house in northwest Syria.
'United States military forces successfully removed a major terrorist threat to the world,' Biden said in remarks at the White House.
Thirteen were reported killed, including six children and four women during the mission, which involved 24 Special Operations commandos backed by attack jets, Reaper drones and helicopter gunships.
'As a final act of desperate cowardness, [al-Qurayshi] with no regard to the lives of his own family or others in the building, he chose to blow himself up,' Biden said, adding the ISIS leader blew up 'that third floor rather than face justice for the crimes he has committed, taking several members of his family with him.'
'This horrible terrorist leader is no more,' he added.
After al-Qurayshi was named the head of ISIS in 2019, the United States put a bounty of up to $10 million on his head.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris and national security aides monitored a live-feed of the operation from the White House Situation Room, according to a photo released by the administration.
'This operation is testament to America's reach and capability to take out terrorist threats, no matter where they try to hide anywhere in the world. I'm determined to protect the American people from terrorist threats, and I'll take decisive action to protect this country,' Biden said in his short remarks where he took no questions.
'We remain vigilant. We remain prepared. Last night's operation took a major terrorist leader off the battlefield and sent a strong message to terrorists around the world: We will come after you and find you,' the president added.
During the raid, U.S. special forces landed in helicopters and attacked the house in a rebel-held part of Syria near the border with Turkey, where they fought gunmen for two hours, according to local reports based on interviews with witnesses.
The raid was aimed at a big house in the Syrian city of Atmeh, in the province of Idlib, where the ISIS leader was hiding. The suicide bomb that al-Qurayshi set off broke the top floor of the three-story house.
Local news said it was a horrible scene, with blood all over the white bricks that made up the house and body parts lying around the area.
Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, also known as Abdullah Qardash or Hajji Abdullah, took over as leader of the terrorist group ISIS after the previous leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, blew himself up in 2019 in the nearby town of Barisha during a similar raid by U.S. forces.
