‘Al-Qaeda leader Zawahiri pledges allegiance to new Taliban chief’
The leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist group, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has reportedly pledged allegiance to the new Taliban leader in Afghanistan. Zawahri pledged assistance to Haibatullah Akhundzada — the new leader of Taliban — in a 14-minute online audio message on Saturday, the report said. The authenticity of the recording, however, could not be immediately verified. Zawahiri rose to the position of al-Qaeda’s top leader after the terrorist group’s then-leader, Osama bin Laden, was killed in Pakistan by US forces in 2011. He is believed to be hiding in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. Haibatullah Akhundzada, the leader of the Taliban militant group (file photo) Akhundzada was picked the Taliban’s leader, when former ringleader Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in an American drone attack in a remote border area inside Pakistan on May 21. Al-Qaeda has recently been seeing defections to the Daesh terrorist group. Some Afghan militant commanders have left the Taliban to p