WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden announced that Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri was killed in a US drone strike in Kabul, an operation he hailed as delivering “justice” while expressing hope that it brings “one more measure of closure” to families of victims of September 11, 2001, attacks on United States.

President said in an evening address from White House that US intelligence officials tracked Al-Zawahiri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. President approved operation last week and it was carried out Sunday. Al-Zawahiri and better known Osama bin Laden plotted 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by US Navy Seals after a nearly decade-long hunt.

“Killing of Zawahiri has important symbolic, strategic and practical implications for global war on terror,” Arie Kruglanski, distinguished university professor of psychology at University of Maryland and an expert on psychology of terrorism and political activism, told foreign news agency. “On symbolic level it signals that global war on Islamist terrorism continues and that leaders of this international terrorism cannot expect to survive. Zawahiri, bin Laden, Zarqawi, Baghdadi were all killed by Americans and their successors can expect a similar fate.” Operation is a significant counterterrorism win for Biden administration just 11 months after American troops left country after a two-decade war.

“He will never again, never again, allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens,” Biden said.