CIA Likely Used ‘Ninja Bomb’ to Kill Terrorist Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri

The U.S. drone strike that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, chief of the terrorist group Al Qaeda, over the weekend was carried out by the CIA utilizing what was possible the Hellfire R9X missile, in response to the New Y0rk Times and India’s Hindustan Times. The missile is exclusive for not having any explosive materials and as a substitute deploys six retractable blades, which has earned it nicknames just like the “flying Ginsu” and the Ninja bomb.

The missile’s existence was first publicly revealed in 2019 by a narrative within the Wall Street Journal, which famous that the missile has been in use since no less than February of 2017 and was being developed as early as 2011. The R9X is supposedly higher at avoiding collateral injury than a typical Hellfire missile because it doesn’t explode, and kills utilizing pure kinetic vitality. It’s type of like an anvil falling from the sky, because it’s typically described.

Photos posted to social media purporting to indicate the balcony in Kabul, Afghanistan the place al-Zawahiri was killed appear to help the concept that the missile used was of the R9X selection since there seems to be a really exact gap within the constructing the place al-Zawahiri was staying. No one else was killed, in response to the U.S. authorities, although that declare has but to have been confirmed regionally by the Taliban, which at the moment runs Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal final 12 months.

It’s believed that R9X missiles are most frequently used towards automobiles, leaving a distinctive hole coming via the windshield or roof—a weapons that’s supposedly so exact it typically leaves different members of a focused car alive and unhurt. But on this case the missile was used to hit Zawahiri whereas he was out on his balcony.

The Hellfire R9X has been utilized in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia, in response to the Wall Street Journal, although the CIA and Department of Defense are nonetheless maintaining fairly quiet about their deployment of this unusual and distinctive weapon.

The 71-year-old Zawahiri has been on the U.S. hit listing for over twenty years and has been tied to terrorist plots towards American forces world wide. Zawahiri was additionally allegedly a plotter behind the 9/11 terrorist assaults towards the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington D.C.

Drone strikes carried out by the U.S. have been controversial for many years. Experimental drones have been utilized in every little thing from World War II to the Vietnam War, however President George W. Bush kicked off the widespread use of drones in earnest after the assaults on 9/11. President Barack Obama expanded the drone program dramatically after he got here to workplace in 2009 and President Donald Trump expanded it even additional when he took workplace in 2017. And whereas President Joe Biden has reportedly reduce the variety of drone strikes throughout his almost two years in workplace, there have been inexcusable errors on his watch which have gotten harmless individuals killed.

The most high-profile homicide of civilians below President Biden’s presidency was on August 29, 2021, in the course of the nation’s exit from Afghanistan. Ten individuals, together with seven youngsters, had been killed after the U.S. army believed they had been monitoring a terrorist affiliated with ISIS-Okay. It seems the individual they had been monitoring was truly an support employee in Afghanistan named Zemari Ahmadi, who was employed by California-based Nutrition and Education International earlier than he was killed.

The New York Times obtained video of the assault towards Ahmadi and different harmless individuals via a Freedom of Information Act request, however no U.S. army service members had been disciplined for the assault.