Al Qaeda's second-in-command dead in Iran

Washington: Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was gunned down by 2 men on a motorcycle in the streets of Tehran in August.

The gunning down of Masri, who is believed to be the successor of Al Qaeda's current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was kept secret until now.

A senior Afghan security source said that in October, Masri was long been under the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's Most Wanted Terrorist's list.

It is pretty unclear if the US had any role to play in the killing of the Egyptian-born militant. Indeed, US authorities were hunting for him and other Al Qaeda members in Iran for years.

Al Qaeda has not announced his death, Iranian officials have kept it covered and no government has publicly claimed any responsibility regarding the demise.

On Saturday, Iran confirmed that there are no Al Qaeda terrorists on their soil.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said in a statement that the United States and Israel sometimes try to tie Iran to such groups by lying and leaking false information.

However, the Israeli prime minister refrained from making any comments on the situation.

Israel said that in the past, its intelligence services have penetrated Iran in recent years, including the smuggling out of allegedly archived nuclear secrets in 2018.

The report of Masri's death comes weeks after killing of two other senior Al Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. It is not immediately known if his death has any effect on Al Qaeda's activities. Even though the group has lost senior leaders in nearly two decades since the attacks on New York and Washington, it has maintained active affiliates from the Middle East to Afghanistan to West Africa.

In October, Afghan security forces killed Abu Muhsin al-Masri, another person under the lookout of FBI's terrorist list, while the Afghan government announced that it had killed yet another notable member of the Al Qaeda.

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