U.S. Drone Strike Targets Al-Qaeda Second in Command

U.S. Drone Strike Targets Al-Qaeda Second in Command (New York, NY) – Abu al-Khayr al-Masri, the deputy to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, was reportedly killed in northwest Syria by a U.S. drone strike. Masri, the son-in-law to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, had been part of the global jihadi organization for three decades. Masri was implicated in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 that killed 200 people. It was reportedly in Masri’s house in Afghanistan that al-Qaeda leaders first learned of the plans for the 9/11 attacks. In 2005, both the U.N. and the U.S. government levied sanctions on Masri after having designated him as a terrorist associate.