President Trump finally confirmed the long-rumored death of Osama bin Laden’s son, Hamza bin Laden, Saturday — but provided only sparse details.
The al Qaeda heir apparent “was killed in a United States counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region,” according to a statement released by the White House.
The younger bin Laden, who was thought to have been in his early 30s, “was responsible for planning and dealing with various terrorist groups,” Trump added.
The State Department dubbed Hamza a “specially designated global terrorist” in January 2017 — and in February announced a $1 million price on his head.
But media reports last month pointed to his death in an airstrike sometime during Trump’s first two years in office, long before the bounty was declared.
The date of his death was not included in Trump’s announcement.
Hamza bin Laden’s last confirmed public statement focused on threats against Saudi Arabia and was released by al Qaeda in March 2018.
Terror experts regarded him as a uniquely dangerous figure, one who had the potential to take up his father’s mantle and reunify the scattered members of the jihadi movement after the collapse of the ISIS caliphate.
Al Qaeda’s current leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, praised him as a “lion from the den of al Qaeda” in a 2015 video that appeared on jihadi websites.
Experts believe Hamza was with his father in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 Americans.
The two were together in Pakistan for a time in the years after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan scattered al Qaeda’s leadership, according to analysts at the Brookings Institution.
Hamza was not present at his father’s hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, when Navy SEALS raided the compound in 2011 and killed the terror kingpin.
But documents seized there suggested that Osama bin Laden was planning to have his son join him to be groomed as al Qaeda’s next chief.
Hamza was married to a daughter of Egyptian terrorist Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, a mastermind of the bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people in 1998, and is thought to have had two children, according to the State Department.
President Trump has remained notably silent about Hamza’s rumored demise in the weeks since reports hit the press.
“I don’t want to comment on it. I don’t want to comment on that,” he said as he declined to answer questions at a White House event in July.
But Defense Secretary Mark Esper told Fox News Channel in August that it was “my understanding” that Hamza bin Laden was dead.