Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency has been sheltering al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in the port city of Karachi after he survived a drone strike in a remote area near the Afghan border last year, according to a report in Newsweek.
Egypt-born Zawahiri, a trained surgeon, has been protected by the ISI since US forces evicted al-Qaeda from Afghanistan in late 2001, Newsweek quoted several authoritative sources as saying. His “most likely location”, the sources said, is Karachi.
Bruce Riedel, a 30-year CIA veteran who was the top adviser on South Asia and the Middle East for the past four US presidents said: “Like everything about his location, there’s no positive proof.” He said: “There are pretty good indications, including some of the material found in Abbottabad, the Pakistani town where Osama Bin Laden was killed.”
In the first week of January 2016, the Obama administration carried out a drone strike to target Zawahiri in the remote Shawal Valley in Pakistan’s federally administered tribal areas, multiple sources told Newsweek.An unnamed senior militant leader in the region said Zawahiri survived but five of his security guards were killed. “The drone hit next to the room where Dr Zawahiri was staying,” the militant leader said. “The shared wall collapsed, and debris from the explosion showered on him and broke his glasses, but luckily he was safe.”
A former top Pakistani official who maintains close ties with the Islamabad government would confirm only that Zawahiri is “in a large Pakistani city”. Karachi “makes sense” as a sanctuary the official said, given its sympathies for militant Islam, congested 19th-century streets and large military presence.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, an eye surgeon who helped found the Egyptian Islamic Jihad militant group, took over the leadership of al-Qaeda after Osama bin Laden was killed by US forces in 2011