Alwaght- Al-Qaeda Leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, pledged allegiance to the new Taliban leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, in an online audio message on Saturday.
"As leader of the al Qaeda organization…I extend my pledge of allegiance once again..," al-Zawahri said in a 14 minute recording, Reuters reported without proving the authenticity of the recording.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Egyptian doctor-turned-militant, became al Qaeda's leader after U.S. Navy Seals killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011, and he is thought to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, having been based there since the late 1990s.
Bin Laden's death was followed in June by the demise of another powerful, top-ranking al-Qaeda leader, Fazul Abdullah Mohammed. He was the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa and organized the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998. He was killed during a shootout at a security checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia.
Mansour took over the Taliban’s leadership position in July 2015, replacing its founder and spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, who died in 2013. Notably, the Taliban only confirmed Omar's death in 2015.
Mansour first joined the Taliban in 1995. Previous reports said he was killed in a battle last year, though those were denied by the Afghan government.
Some Afghan insurgent commanders have broken away from the Taliban to pledge support for ISIS terrorists, though it operates largely in Iraq and Syria, and is active in parts of North Africa.
