Hamza Bin Laden 'killed in air strike'

Hamza Bin Laden, the son of al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden, died in an air strike, US media outlets report, citing intelligence officials.

The place and date of death were unclear. The Pentagon did not comment.

Bin Laden, thought to be aged about 30, had released audio and video messages calling for attacks on the US and other countries.

As recently as February, the US government offered $1m (£825,000) for information leading to his capture.

His death was widely reported by US media outlets including NBC News, the New York Times and CNN, citing unnamed US intelligence officials.

Bin Laden was seen as an emerging leader of al-Qaeda. The reports say he was killed in a military operation in the last two years and the US government was involved, but the exact date and time were unclear.

President Donald Trump declined to comment when questioned by reporters on Wednesday, as did the White House national security adviser, John Bolton.

There was no confirmation from al-Qaeda. Supporters of the Islamist militant group have urged caution over the reports and are awaiting an official announcement from its leaders, according to analysts at BBC Monitoring.

Who was Hamza Bin Laden?
Hamza Bin Laden was officially designated by the US as a global terrorist two years ago. He was widely seen as a potential successor to his father.

He was believed to have been under house arrest in Iran, although other reports suggest he may have been based near the Afghan-Pakistani border.

He is thought to have been born in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia before spending years with his mother in Iran.

The US state department says Bin Laden married the daughter of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, or Abu Muhammad al-Masri, who was indicted for his alleged involvement in the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

In 2011, US special forces killed his father, Osama, in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. He had approved the attacks on the US on 11 September 2001, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.

The US state department says documents seized in that raid suggest Hamza Bin Laden was being groomed to take over the leadership of al-Qaeda. A video of his wedding was found among thousands of other documents.

In 2017, a leaked message from Bin Laden to his family reportedly informed them that his 12-year-old son had been killed. The circumstances of his son's death were unclear.

In recent years, al-Qaeda released 11 audio messages from Bin Laden in which he threatened the US, called for attacks to avenge his father's death and encouraged jihadist action in Syria.

In March 2018, in his last known public statement, he called on the people of the Arabian Peninsula to revolt. Saudi Arabia stripped him of his citizenship in March.

Al-Qaeda's status was undermined during the past decade as the Islamic State group rose to prominence.

A son brought up to hate America
By Chris Buckler, BBC News

It is a sign of how little is known about Hamza Bin Laden that US officials were never able to definitively confirm his age.

In recent months they had floated suggestions that he might be in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iran. But they could not even say for sure in which country one of America's "most wanted" was hiding.

The million-dollar price tag for information was a measure not just of the potential danger he posed but also his symbolic importance to al-Qaeda and its propaganda machine.

Bin Laden was only a child when his father helped plot the 9/11 attacks but, according to the extremist group's legend, he was by his side at the time.

For a son brought up to hate America, avenging his killing at the hands of special forces was always going to be an obsession. In recent years he sent online messages calling for attacks against the US and its allies.

Bin Laden's death, if officially confirmed, will silence someone who was emerging as a new voice of Al-Qaeda. However it will not end the threat from an organisation that carried out the world's most notorious terror attack.

Al-Qaeda: The basics

Osama Bin Laden near Kabul in 2001 -  Getty Images

• Emerged in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, as Arab volunteers joined US-backed Afghan mujahideen fighting to expel the occupying Soviet forces
• Osama Bin Laden set up an organisation to help the volunteers, which became known as al-Qaeda, or "the base"
• He left Afghanistan in 1989, returning in 1996 to run military training camps for thousands of foreign Muslims
• Al-Qaeda declared "holy war" on Americans, Jews and their allies

(Source: BBC)

Osama bin Laden: Eight years after his death, where is al-Qaeda?

It is eight years since Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda, was killed by US forces in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.

The organisation he led was considered one of the deadliest jihadist groups in the world, commanding thousands of fighters.

It was also believed to have had considerable financial resources.

There were anti-American protests in Pakistan following the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011

But with the demise of its leader and the emergence of the Islamic State group (IS), al-Qaeda's power and influence have weakened considerably.

So how influential is the group today, and what threat does it now pose to global security?

Quiet resurgence
While IS has dominated the headlines in recent years, al-Qaeda has been pursuing a strategy of quietly rebuilding and forging alliances with regional groups.

In its latest report, US National Intelligence has warned that senior al-Qaeda leaders are "strengthening the network's global command structure and continuing to encourage attacks against the West and the United States."

The UN, in a report published earlier this year on the threat of global terrorism, said that al-Qaeda "appears to be growing more ambitious…it remains resilient and active in many regions and retains the ambition to project itself more internationally."

In February this year the UK's intelligence chief, Alex Young, also warned of a resurgence of al-Qaeda.

Network of affiliates
A fierce drone campaign by US forces, the killing of its leader and the challenge from the Islamic State group has forced al-Qaeda to adopt new tactics.

It has successfully fostered a network of affiliates or "branches" in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

Bombings by al-Shabaab, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, are a regular occurence in Somalia.

These affiliates are local militant groups who are embedded in local communities and have sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda's leadership.

Unlike IS, al-Qaeda has been careful not to alienate local populations.

Part of its new strategy is to build local alliances and engage in community development projects.

In 2013 al-Qaeda issued a "General Guidelines for Jihad" which introduced significant reforms within the organisation.

The document, among other things, stresses a more restrained and community-based approach, instructing fighters to avoid behaviour which could trigger a "revolt of the masses."

"Al-Qaeda has made an art of homing in on local concerns, like corruption or marginalisation, and slotting them into its agenda of global jihad", according to Dr Elisabeth Kendall, senior fellow at Pembroke College, Oxford.

"In so doing, it acts a a local 'saviour' and positions itself as 'the good guys of jihad' as opposed to the brutal thugs of IS," she says.

Al-Qaeda has been steadily increasing its attacks through its various branches and affiliates.

In 2018 it carried out a total of 316 attacks around the world, according to data collected by The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

Al-Qaeda branches

• Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) came into being in 2006 when an Algeria-based militant group affiliated with al-Qaeda. Following a crackdown by Algerian forces it has moved into the Sahel and West Africa.
• Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was formed in 2009 in a merger between two regional offshoots of the international jihadist network in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
• Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) operates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Myanmar and Bangladesh, and was established in September 2014.
• Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is an al-Qaeda-affiliated organisation formed by the merger of several militant groups in Mali and West Africa.
• Al-Shabaab is active in Somalia and East Africa and swore allegiance to al-Qaeda in 2012.
• Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) is a merger of several Syrian militant jihadist groups, and has links to al-Qaeda, according to the UN. HTS currently controls Idlib province in northern Syria.
• Al-Qaeda in Egypt consists of al-Qaeda-aligned groups operating in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Future leadership?
In a speech in 2015, al-Qaeda's current leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, introduced a young man as a "lion from the den" of bin Laden's terrorist network.

That young man was Hamza bin Laden, a son of Osama bin Laden who is widely seen as the future leader of al-Qaeda.

The US has officially designated Hamza as a global terrorist and has offered a reward of up to $1m (£750,000) for information on his whereabouts.

Hamza Bin Laden's whereabouts are not known

The 30-year-old has been promoted as a rising star on pro-al-Qaeda websites, someone they hope will inspire the next generation of jihadists, and reinvigorate the group.

In recent years, he has released audio and video messages calling on followers to attack the US and its Western allies in revenge for his father's killing.

According to Lina Khatib, head of Middle East and North Africa at Chatham House, "the end of IS caliphate has pushed al-Qaeda networks to be more thoughtful and strategic about their operations.

"Al-Qaeda is more dependent now on having a strategic leader. This is helping Hamza Bin Laden to gain support in his bid to replace his father as al-Qaeda's leader," she says.

(Source: BBC)