WASHINGTON (AP) – The White House announced Saturday thatHamza bin Laden, the son of the late al-Qaida leader who had become an increasingly prominent figure in the terrorist organization , was killed in a US counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
A statement issued in President Donald Trump’s name gave no further details, such as when Hamza 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 CIA declined comment on whether the agency was involved.
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. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters. Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Fox News Channel in a late August interview that it was “my understanding” that Hamza bin Laden was dead.
A U.S. official familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity about intelligence-gathering said bin laden was killed in the past 18 months. Confirming such a high-profile death can take a long time, said the official, who declined to say what led the U.S. to report bin Laden’s death with certainty.
RELATED: Hamza bin Laden
8PHOTOS
Hamza Bin Laden
See Gallery
In this image from video released by the CIA, Hamza bin Laden is seen as an adult at his wedding. The never-before-seen video of Osama bin Laden’s son and potential successor was released Nov. 1, 2017, by the CIA in a trove of material recovered during the May 2011 raid that killed the al-Qaida leader at his compound in Pakistan. The one hourlong video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard, at his wedding. He is sitting on a carpet with other men. (CIA via AP)
In this image from video released by the CIA, Hamza bin Laden is seen as an adult at his wedding. The never-before-seen video of Osama bin Laden’s son and potential successor was released Nov. 1, 2017, by the CIA in a trove of material recovered during the May 2011 raid that killed the al-Qaida leader at his compound in Pakistan. The one hourlong video shows Hamza bin Laden, sporting a trimmed mustache but no beard, at his wedding. He is sitting on a carpet with other men. (CIA via AP)
FILE – In this 1998 file photo made available on March 19, 2004, Osama bin Laden is seen at a news conference in Khost, Afghanistan. Bin Laden, was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list before the terrorist attacks of 9 / 11, put there for his role in the 1998 deadly bombings of US Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, appearing as Usama bin Laden. When he was killed in 2011, the FBI updated the list to include a large red-and-white “deceased” label atop his photograph. (AP Photo / Mazhar Ali Khan, File)
This image taken from video released by Qatar’s Al-Jazeera televison broadcast on Friday Oct. 5, 2001 is said to show Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, at an undisclosed location. Al-Jazeera did not say whether the image was taken before or after the Sept. 11 attacks or how they obtained it. At right is bin Laden’s top lieutenant, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahri. Bin Laden is believed to have been at a celebration of the union of his al-Qaida network and al-Zawahri’s Egyptian Jihad group. Graphic at top right reads “Exclusive to Al-Jazeera.” At bottom right is the station’s logo which reads “Al-Jazeera.” (AP Photo / Al-Jazeera via APTN)
Hamza Ben Laden (ici lors de son mariage, probablement en Iran) terrorisme undated file video grab released by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on November 1, 2017 and taken by researchers from the Federation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, shows an image from the wedding of killed Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden’s son Hamza. The CIA has put online 470, 000 additional files seized in May 2011 when US Navy SEALs burst into the Abbottabad compound and shot dead the leader of Al-Qaeda’s global extremist network. According to Thomas Joscelyn and Bill Roggio, scholars from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who were allowed to study the trove before it was made public, it provides new insights. “These documents will go a long way to help fill in some of the blanks we still have about al Qaeda’s leadership,” Roggio said. The inclusion of Hamza Bin Laden’s wedding video, for example, gives the world public the first image of Bin Laden’s favorite son as an adult – an image apparently shot in Iran.
Reprodução de imagem de vídeo divulgada pela CIA em 1º de novembro de 2017 mostra Hamza Bin Laden em seu casamento
Al Jazeera tv image purportedly showing Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, handling wreckage of crashed US helicopter, Ghazni, Afghanistan, video still
Al Jazeera tv image purportedly showing Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden, Ghazni, Afghanistan, video still
HIDE CAPTION
SHOW CAPTION
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.” Bin Laden’s death leaves Zawahiri with the challenge of finding a different successor.
The U.S. government in February said itwas offering $ 1 millionfor 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 US 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 messages calling for attacks against the US 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 CIAin 2017 that was seized during the 2011 US raid that killed Osama bin Laden showed Hamza bin Laden with a trimmed mustache but no beard at his wedding. Previous images have only shown him as a child.
Hamza bin Laden is believed to have been born in 1989, the year of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, where his father became known among the mujahedeen fighters. His father returned to Saudi Arabia and later fled to Sudan after criticizing the kingdom for allowing U.S. troops to deploy in the country during the 1991 Gulf War. He later fled Sudan for Afghanistan in 1996, where he declared war against the US
As al-Qaida’s leader , Osama bin Laden oversaw attacks that included the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, as well as the bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen. He and others plotted and executed the 2001 attacks against the United States that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. U.S. Navy SEALs killed the elder bin Laden in a raid on a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011.
This past March, Saudi Arabia announced that it hadrevoked the citizenshipof Hamza bin Laden. The kingdom stripped Osama bin Laden’s citizenship in 1994 while he was living in exile in Sudan when Hamza bin Laden was just a child. It was unclear where Hamza bin Laden was at the time of the Saudi action.
Hamza bin Laden began appearing in militant videos and recordings in 2015 as an al-Qaida spokesman.
“If you think that your sinful crime that you committed in Abbottabad has passed without punishment, then you thought wrong,” he said in his first audio recording .
After the Sept. 11 attacks, a US-led invasion of Afghanistan sought to topple the Taliban, an ally of al-Qaida, and seize the elder bin Laden. He escaped and split from his family as he crossed into Pakistan. Hamza was 12 when he saw his father for the last time – receiving a parting gift of prayer beads.
“It was as if we pulled out our livers and left them there, “he wrote of the separation.
Hamza and his mother followed other al-Qaida members into Pakistan and then Iran, where other al-Qaida leaders hid them, according to experts and analysis of documents seized after US raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Iran later put the al-Qaida members on its soil into custody. During this time, Hamza married.
In March 2010, Hamza and others left Iranian custody. He went to Pakistan’s Waziristan province, where he asked for weapons training, according to a letter to the elder bin Laden. His mother left for Abbottabad, joining her husband in his hideout. On May 2, 2011, the Navy SEAL team raided Abbottabad, killing Osama bin Laden and his son Khalid, as well as others. Saber and other wives living in the house were imprisoned. Hamza again disappeared.
In August 2015, a video emerged on jihadi websites of al-Zawahri introducing “a lion from the den of al -Qaida “- Hamza bin Laden. Since then, 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 message in March 2018, in which he threatened the rulers of Saudi Arabia.
___
Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Lolita C. Baldor in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.
More fromAol.com:
On anniversary of 9 / 11, al-Qaida leader pushes for attacks on the US, slams ex-jihadis
Putin says he offered Trump the chance to buy Russian hypersonic weapons
Hong Kong withdraws extradition bill that sparked protests
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings