Zawahiri was on the balcony when the strike took place, US President Joe Biden said in a speech on Monday afternoon. CNN reached out to the National Security Council for comment on the identity of the home, but did not immediately hear back.
The house, located in the Sherpur neighborhood of the Afghan capital, is surrounded by several houses and buildings to the north, south and west. Just east of the house is Omaid High School.
Just under 1,000 feet south-east of the house is the UK embassy in Kabul. According to the British Foreign Office, all diplomatic and consular staff are “temporarily withdrawn” from the country.
A resident living near the area, who heard a loud explosion after 6 a.m. Sunday, told CNN that Taliban fighters were still spreading into the area. The person asked not to be named out of fear for his life.
The strike “rocked” his own home, the resident said.
The Sherpur district of Kabul was an old military base, but during the years of civil conflict and Taliban rule in the 1990s it was left largely unused. In 2003, Afghanistan’s defense ministry abandoned it and the government divided it into more than 50 plots, giving them to powerful people, including government ministers and other high-ranking officials, as well as warlords and drug lords. Their houses soon acquired the nickname “poppy palaces”.
After the fall of the Ashraf Ghani government in August 2021, the majority of Sherpur house owners fled the country and their houses were seized by the Taliban.
It is not clear who owns the house where Zawahiri was killed or if it is one of the confiscated houses.
On Tuesday, a green tarp could be seen draped over the balcony area where the missile strike appears to have occurred.
A BBC television news team filming the house said it was told to leave the area by the Taliban after filming the house and area for their report.
The Taliban continued to block roads leading to the site, a local resident told CNN.
Journalists who tried to access the site throughout Tuesday were blocked from the main and side streets, a reporter told CNN.
Citizens on bicycles, motorcycles and cars were also barred from entering, the reporter said.
The house is located in an area called the Green Belt, where most of Afghanistan’s previous government officials lived. Last year, the home of Afghanistan’s deputy defense minister Bismillah Mohammadi in the area was attacked by a Taliban car bomb.
Zawahiri was in a shelter in central Kabul to be reunited with his family, Biden said, and was killed in what a senior administration official described as “a precision-tailored airstrike” using two Hellfire missiles.
The strike, which took place at 9:48 p.m. ET on Saturday and in the early hours of Sunday morning in Kabul, was approved by Biden after weeks of meetings with his cabinet and key advisers. Removed the 71-year-old al. A Qaeda leader who once acted as Osama bin Laden’s personal physician, and who rose to the top of the terrorist organization after bin Laden was killed in 2011 by US forces.
The jihadist watchdog SITE Intelligence Group said “certain sections of the jihadist community” hold the Taliban responsible for the al Qaeda leader’s death, believing its officials leaked his location to US intelligence.
CNN has reached out to the Taliban for comment.
Before giving the order to kill the terrorist leader, Biden wanted to get a close look at the area in which he was hiding. Among the preparations was a small model of Zawahiri’s safe house, built by intelligence officials and placed inside the White House situation room for Biden to examine as he discussed his options.
CNN’s Mostafa Salem and Rob Picheta contributed to this article.
