Taliban announced that they had to receive intelligence information about the presence of people like al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan. Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban spokesman, said that not knowing about Zawhiri's whereabouts in Kabul shows the group’s “weakness and neglect of duty".
According to Mujahid, based on the Doha agreement, the intelligence had to be shared with the Taliban.
In an interview with Afghanistan's National Television station, Mujahid said that the United States intelligence operation about Ayman al- Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda was a violation of the Doha Agreement.
The Taliban spokesperson further claimed that the US drone strike in Kabul had been conducted with powerful substances which eliminated everything with “no traces left at the scene”.
However, in an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), US National Security Adviser Jack Sullivan said that the US is aware that senior members of the Haqqani network, part of the Taliban government in Kabul, had knowledge of al-Zawahiri's presence.
Meanwhile, according to media reports, al-Zawahiri was staying at the house of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's interior minister. Haqqani held meetings with the leader of al-Qaeda at his residence, but he was not there on the day of the US drone strike.
It has been reported that a couple of relatives of the Taliban's interior minister had also been killed in the drone strike on al-Zawahiri's safe house in Kabul.
