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Fire tore quickly through a house in northeastern Pennsylvania early Friday morning, killing seven adults and three children and horrifying a volunteer firefighter who arrived to battle the blaze only to discover the victims were his own family, authorities said. The children who died were ages 5, 6 and 7, Pennsylvania State Police said in a news release, while the seven adults ranged from their late teens to a 79-year-old man. Autopsies were planned for this weekend. Harold Baker, a volunteer firefighter in the town of Nescopeck, said the 10 victims included his son, daughter, father-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, three grandchildren and two other relatives. He said his two children and the other young victims were visiting their aunt and uncle’s home for swimming and other summertime fun. He said 13 dogs were also in the two-story home, but didn’t say if he knew whether any survived. “All I wanted to do was go in there and get to these people, my family. That’s all that I was thinking about, getting in to them,” Baker said in a phone interview with The Associated Press. Baker grabbed a hose and air pack, and started pouring water on the fire, desperate to make his way inside and calling out to his son. His chief realized whose house it was, and fellow firefighters escorted Baker back to the firehouse. A preliminary investigation suggests the fire broke out on the front porch at around 2:30 a.m., Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce said Friday evening. “The information I have is that the fire started and progressed very quickly, making it very difficult to get out,” he said. Three people were able to escape the blaze, Sanguedolce said. Four state police fire marshals are involved in the investigation, although it won’t be classified as a criminal probe unless they determine the fire was intentionally set, he said. Read: Wildfires in West explode in size amid hot, windy conditions Nescopeck is a small town on the Susquehanna River, about 20 miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre. The house was on a residential street of largely owner-occupied, single family homes. Baker said the address initially given for the call was a neighboring house. He realized it was his family members’ residence as the firetruck approached. He said his unit was the first on scene, and the house was already engulfed in flames. “There wasn’t nothing we could’ve done to get in there. We tried, but we couldn’t get in,” said Baker, 57, who’s been a firefighter for 40 years. His son, 19-year-old Dale Baker, had followed both of his parents into the fire service, joining when he was 16. “He said it all his life, he was just going to be like his dad,” Harold Baker said. Heidi Knorr, the Nescopeck Volunteer Fire Company secretary, called Dale Baker “such a fun-loving soul. He just loved life.” The family was “always willing to help lend a hand to anyone in need,” Knorr said. Dale’s mother was not among the dead listed by Harold Baker. Mike Swank, who lives two doors away across the street, said he happened to be awake early Friday and looked outside after hearing a sharp explosion. He saw the porch “was really going” and went outside, using another neighbor’s hose to keep the blaze from spreading to a garage. “I seen two guys outside and they were in various states of hysteria,” Swank told the AP by phone. One man was on a cellphone, “and I’m trying to ask him if everybody’s out,” he said. “The other guy was out in the street and he was just running around in circles.” Swank said he wasn’t able to get information from them. A fence prevented him from getting to the back of the property. Baker said 14 people were living in the home. One was out delivering newspapers, and three others escaped. Swank said the family had moved in a few months ago under what he understood to be a rent-to-own agreement, and spent a lot of time on the cluttered front porch. “It was so quick and so much smoke, you just knew nobody was going to make it out,” Swank said. He saw cadaver dogs being used to search the scene until the bodies were located.  

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that China's military exercises aimed at Taiwan, including missiles fired into Japan's exclusive economic zone, represent a “significant escalation” and that he has urged Beijing to back down. China launched the drills following a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taiwan that infuriated Beijing, which claims the self-governed island as its own territory. Blinken told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Cambodia, however, that Pelosi's visit was peaceful and did not represent a change in American policy toward Taiwan, accusing China of using it as a "pretext to increase provocative military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait." He said the situation had led to a “vigorous communication” during East Asia Summit meetings in Phnom Penh in which both he and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi took part along with the ASEAN nations, Russia and others. “I reiterated the points that we made publicly as well as directly to Chinese counterparts in recent days, again, about the fact that they should not use the visit as a pretext for war, escalation, for provocative actions, that there is no possible justification for what they’ve done and urge them to cease these actions,” he said. Blinken did not sit down one-on-one with Wang but said he had spoken with the Chinese foreign minister already about the possibility of a Pelosi visit to Taiwan before it had taken place during meetings in Bali, and had made the U.S. position clear. China on Friday announced unspecified sanctions on Pelosi for her visit. A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said she had disregarded China’s concerns and resolute opposition to her trip. Pelosi received a euphoric welcome as the first U.S. House speaker, and highest ranking U.S. official, to visit Taiwan in more than 25 years. China opposes any engagement by Taiwanese officials with foreign governments, and has accused the U.S. of breaking the status quo with the Pelosi visit. The U.S. insists there has been no change to its “one-China” position of recognizing the government in Beijing, while allowing for informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. Despite the aggressive Chinese reaction to the visit, Blinken said the U.S. would also not change its “commitment to the security of our allies in the region,” and that the Defense Department had ordered the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier group “to remain on station in the general area to monitor the situation.” Read:China sanctions Pelosi, sends 100 warplanes to Taiwan drills “We will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows,” he said. “We'll continue to conduct standard air and maritime transits through the Taiwan Strait, consistent with our long-standing approach to working with allies and partners to uphold freedom of navigation and overflight.” As the East Asia Summit opened, Wang patted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the shoulder as he entered the room and gave the already-seated Lavrov a quick wave before taking his own seat. Lavrov waved back in response. Blinken, who entered the room last, did not even glance at Lavrov as he took his own seat about a half dozen chairs away, or at Wang who was seated farther down the same table as Lavrov. Ahead of the Phnom Penh talks, the U.S. State Department indicated Blinken had no plans to meet one-on-one with either man during the course of the meetings. Following the meetings, Lavrov told reporters there had been a lot of “fiery statements” about the aftermath of the Pelosi visit. “There have been rather sharp statements from our Chinese partners, who we support," he told reporters. "And there have been responses from the U.S. and Japan that it’s not China’s business and that the declared policy of supporting the one-China principle doesn’t mean one has to ask Beijing for permission to visit Taiwan. Surely, it’s a weird logic.” The talks came a day after WNBA star Brittney Griner was convicted of drug possession and sentenced to nine years in prison by Russia in a politically charged case amid antagonisms over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Blinken said the conviction and sentence “compounds the injustice that has been done to her.” “It puts a spotlight on our very significant turn with Russia’s legal system and the Russian government’s use of wrongful detentions to advance its own agenda using individuals as political pawns,” he said. Blinken has suggested the possibility of a prisoner swap for Griner and another American jailed in Russia, Paul Whelan, but Lavrov told reporters that such a deal could only be decided upon by Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden. “We’re ready to discuss this topic, but to discuss it within the channel that was agreed on by presidents Putin and Biden,” Lavrov said on the sidelines of the ASEAN meeting. On Thursday, China canceled a foreign ministers’ meeting with Japan to protest a statement from the Group of Seven industrialized nations that said there was no justification for Beijing's military exercises, which virtually encircle Taiwan. “Japan, together with other member of the G-7 and the EU, made an irresponsible statement accusing China and confounding right and wrong,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said in Beijing. When Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa began to speak Friday at the East Asia Summit, both Lavrov and Wang walked out of the room, according to a diplomat in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss the private session. In the wake of the Chinese missile launches into Japan's economic zone, Blinken said the U.S. stands in “strong solidarity” with Japan following the “dangerous actions China has taken.”

The federal government declared a public health emergency Thursday to bolster the response to the monkeypoxoutbreak that has infected more than 7,100 Americans. The announcement will free up money and other resources to fight the virus, which may cause fever, body aches, chills, fatigue and pimple-like bumps on many parts of the body. “We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously,” said Xavier Becerra, head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The declaration by HHS comes as the Biden administration has faced criticism over monkeypox vaccine availability. Clinics in major cities such as New York and San Francisco say they haven’t received enough of the two-shot vaccine to meet demand, and some have had to stop offering the second dose to ensure supply of first doses. The White House said it has made more than 1.1 million doses available and has helped to boost domestic diagnostic capacity to 80,000 tests per week. The monkeypox virus spreads through prolonged skin-to-skin contact, including hugging, cuddling and kissing, as well as sharing bedding, towels and clothing. The people who have gotten sick so far have been primarily men who have sex with men. But health officials emphasize that the virus can infect anyone. No one in the United States has died. A few deaths have been reported in other countries. Read: China cannot stop US officials from visiting Taiwan: Pelosi Earlier this week, the Biden administration named top officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to serve as the White House coordinators to combat monkeypox. Thursday’s declaration is an important — and overdue — step, said Lawrence Gostin, a public health law expert at Georgetown University. “It signals the U.S. government’s seriousness and purpose, and sounds a global alarm,” he said. Under the declaration, HHS can draw from emergency funds, hire or reassign staff to deal with the outbreak and take other steps to control the virus. For example, the announcement should help the federal government to seek more information from state and local health officials about who is becoming infected and who is being vaccinated. That information can be used to better understand how the outbreak is unfolding and how well the vaccine works. Gostin said the U.S. government has been too cautious and should have declared a nationwide emergency earlier. Public health measures to control outbreaks have increasingly faced legal challenges in recent years, but Gostin didn’t expect that to happen with monkeypox. “It is a textbook case of a public health emergency,” Gostin said. “It’s not a red or a blue state issue. There is no political opposition to fighting monkeypox.” A public health emergency can be extended, similar to what happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, he noted. The urgency in the current response stems from the rapid spread of the virus coupled with the limited availability of the two-dose vaccine called Jynneos, which is considered the main medical weapon against the disease.

Firefighters have gotten their first hold on California’s deadliest and most destructive fire of the year and expected that the blaze would remain stalled through the weekend. The McKinney Fire near the Oregon border was 10% contained as of Wednesday night and bulldozers and hand crews were making progress carving firebreaks around much of the rest of the blaze, fire officials said at a community meeting. The southeastern corner of the blaze above the Siskyou County seat of Yreka, which has about 7,800 residents, was contained. Evacuation orders for sections of the town and Hawkinsville were downgraded to warnings, allowing people to return home but with a warning that the situation remained dangerous. About 1,300 residents remained under evacuation orders, officials said. The fire didn’t advance on Wednesday, following several days of brief but heavy rain from thunderstorms that provided cloudy, damper weather. “This is a sleeping giant right now,” said Darryl Laws, a unified incident commander on the blaze. In addition, firefighters expected Thursday to fully surround a 1,000-acre (404-hectare) spot fire on the northern edge of the McKinney Fire. The fire broke out last Friday and has charred nearly 90 square miles (233 square kilometers) of forestland, left tinder-dry by drought. More than 100 homes and other buildings have burned and four bodies have been found, including two in a burned car in a driveway. The blaze was driven at first by fierce winds ahead of a thunderstorm cell. More storms earlier this week proved a mixed blessing. A drenching rain Tuesday dumped up to 3 inches (7.6 centimeters) on some eastern sections of the blaze but most of the fire area got next to nothing, said Dennis Burns, a fire behavior analyst. The latest storm also brought concerns about possible river flooding and mudslides. A private contractor in a pickup truck who was aiding the firefighting effort was hurt when a bridge gave out and washed away the vehicle, Kreider said. The contractor had non-life-threatening injuries, she said. However, no weather events were forecast for the next three or four days that could give the fire “legs,” Burns said. Read: Wildfires in West explode in size amid hot, windy conditions The good news came too late for many people in the scenic hamlet of Klamath River, which was home to about 200 people before the fire reduced many of the homes to ashes, along with the post office, community center and other buildings. At an evacuation center Wednesday, Bill Simms said that three of the four victims were his neighbors. Two were a married couple who lived up the road. “I don’t get emotional about stuff and material things,” Simms said. “But when you hear my next-door neighbors died ... that gets a little emotional.” Their names haven’t been officially confirmed, which could take several days, said Courtney Kreider, a spokesperson with the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office. Simms, a 65-year-old retiree, bought his property six years ago as a second home with access to hunting and fishing. He went back to check on his property Tuesday and found it was destroyed. “The house, the guest house and the RV were gone. It’s just wasteland, devastation,” Simms said. He found the body of one of his two cats, which he buried. The other cat is still missing. He was able to take his two dogs with him to the shelter. Harlene Schwander, 82, lost the home she had just moved into a month ago to be closer to her son and daughter-in-law. Their home survived but her house was torched. Schwander, an artist, said she only managed to grab a few family photos and some jewelry before evacuating. Everything else — including her art collection — went up in flames. “I’m sad. Everybody says it was just stuff, but it was all I had,” she said. California and much of the rest of the West is in drought and wildfire danger is high, with the historically worst of the fire season still to come. Fires are burning in Montana, Idaho and Nebraska and have destroyed homes and threaten communities. Scientists say climate change has made the West warmer and drier over the last three decades and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. California has seen its largest, most destructive and deadliest wildfires in the last five years. In 2018, a massive blaze in the Sierra Nevada foothills destroyed much of the city of Paradise and killed 85 people, the most deaths from a U.S. wildfire in a century. In northwestern Montana, a fire that has destroyed at least four homes and forced the evacuation of about 150 residences west of Flathead Lake continued to be pushed north by winds on Wednesday, fire officials said. Crews had to be pulled off the lines on Wednesday afternoon due to increased fire activity, Sara Rouse, a public information officer, told NBC Montana. There were concerns the fire could reach Lake Mary Ronan by Wednesday evening, officials said. The fire, which started on July 29 in grass on the Flathead Indian Reservation, quickly moved into timber and charred nearly 29 square miles (76 square km). The Moose Fire in Idaho has burned more than 85 square miles (220 square kilometers) in the Salmon-Challis National Forest while threatening homes, mining operations and fisheries near the town of Salmon. And a wildfire in northwestern Nebraska led to evacuations and destroyed or damaged several homes near the small city of Gering. The Carter Canyon Fire began Saturday as two separate fires that merged.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met top South Korean political leaders on Thursday, a day after she concluded her high-profile visit to Taiwan by renewing Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to defending democracy on the self-governing island despite vehement protests from China. Regional tensions are rising following Pelosi’s Taiwan trip, with China preparing to launch its largest military maneuvers aimed at Taiwan in more than a quarter of a century in response. After visiting Taiwan, Pelosi and other members of Congress flew to South Korea — a key U.S. ally where about 28,500 American troops are deployed — on Wednesday evening, as part of an Asian tour that included stops in Singapore and Malaysia. After South Korea, they will travel to Japan. On Thursday, Pelosi met South Korean National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin Pyo and other senior members of Parliament for talks on regional security, economic cooperation and climate issues. Before their talks, live TV footage showed Kim and Pelosi bumping elbows and posing for a photo in front of South Korean and U.S. national flags. Later in the day, Pelosi planned to visit an inter-Korean border area that is jointly controlled by the American-led U.N. Command and North Korea, a South Korean official said requesting anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to media on the matter. If that visit occurs, Pelosi would be the highest-level American to go to the Joint Security Area since then-President Donald Trump went there in 2019 for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Sitting inside the 4-kilometer (2.5-mile) -wide Demilitarized Zone, a buffer created at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, the JSA is the site of past bloodshed and a venue for numerous talks. U.S. presidents and other top officials have often travelled to the JSA and other border areas to reaffirm their security commitment to South Korea. Any statement critical of North Korea by Pelosi is certain to draw a furious response from Pyongyang. On Wednesday, the North’s Foreign Ministry slammed the United States over her Taiwan trip, saying that “the current situation clearly shows that the impudent interference of the U.S. in internal affairs of other countries.” Also on Thursday afternoon, Pelosi will speak by phone with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is on a vacation this week, according to Yoon’s office. No face-to-face meeting has been arranged between them. Yoon, a conservative, took office in May with a vow to boost South Korea’s military alliance with the United States and take a tougher line on North Korean provocations. Pelosi’s Taiwan visit, the first by an incumbent House speaker in 25 years, has infuriated China, which views the island nation as a breakaway province to be annexed by force if necessary. China views visits to Taiwan by foreign officials as recognizing its sovereignty. Read:US-China ties on a precipice after Pelosi visit to Taiwan “Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” Pelosi said in a short speech during a meeting with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday. “America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.” The Biden administration and Pelosi have said the United States remains committed to the so-called one-China policy, which recognizes Beijing but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. The administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting. The military exercises that China plans to stage in response to Pelosi’s Taiwan visit are to start Thursday and involve live fire. They would be the biggest aimed at Taiwan since 1995, when China fired missiles in a large-scale exercise to show its displeasure over a visit by then-Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to the U.S. China also already flew fighter jets and other war planes toward Taiwan, and blocked imports of citrus and fish from Taiwan. Tsai pushed back firmly against Beijing’s military exercises, parts of which will enter Taiwanese waters. “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said at her meeting with Pelosi. “We will firmly uphold our nation’s sovereignty and continue to hold the line of defense for democracy.” In Washington, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby sought to tamp down fears. He told ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday that U.S. officials “don’t believe we’re at the brink now, and there’s certainly no reason for anybody to be talking about being at the brink going forward.” Addressing Beijing’s threats, Pelosi said she hopes it’s clear that while China has prevented Taiwan from attending certain international meetings, “that they understand they will not stand in the way of people coming to Taiwan as a show of friendship and of support.” Pelosi noted that congressional support for Taiwan is bipartisan, and she praised the island’s democracy. She stopped short of saying that the U.S would defend Taiwan militarily and emphasized that Congress is “committed to the security of Taiwan, in order to have Taiwan be able to most effectively defend themselves.” On Thursday, the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations called for calm in the Taiwan Strait, urging against any “provocative action." ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for a regional forum said they were concerned the situation could “destabilize the region and eventually could lead to miscalculation, serious confrontation, open conflicts and unpredictable consequences among major powers.” Pelosi's focus has always been the same, she said, going back to her 1991 visit to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, when she and other lawmakers unfurled a small banner supporting democracy two years after a bloody military crackdown on protesters at the square. That visit was also about human rights and what she called dangerous technology transfers to “rogue countries.” Pelosi’s trip heightened U.S.-China tensions more than visits by other members of Congress because of her position as leader of the House of Representatives. The last House speaker to visit Taiwan was Newt Gingrich in 1997. China and Taiwan, which split in 1949 after a civil war, have no official relations but multibillion-dollar business ties.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi departed Taiwan on Wednesday after meeting with the president and other officials in a visit that heightened tensions with China. Pelosi and five other members of Congress were headed to South Korea, the next stop on an Asia tour that also includes Singapore, Malaysia and Japan. In Taiwan, she said her delegation was showing their commitment to the self-governing island that China claims and says must come under its control. Read: Why Pelosi went to Taiwan, and why China’s angry China staged military drills after her arrival and called her visit a provocation that infringes on its sovereignty.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meeting leaders in Taiwan despite warnings from China, said Wednesday that she and other members of Congress in a visiting delegation are showing they will not abandon their commitment to the self-governing island. “Today the world faces a choice between democracy and autocracy,” she said in a short speech during a meeting with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen. “America’s determination to preserve democracy, here in Taiwan and around the world, remains ironclad.” China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and opposes any engagement by Taiwanese officials with foreign governments, announced multiple military exercises around the island and issued a series of harsh statements after the delegation touched down Tuesday night in the Taiwanese capital Taipei. Taiwan decried the planned actions. Read: US House Speaker Pelosi arrives in Taiwan, defying Beijing “Such an act equals to sealing off Taiwan by air and sea … and severely violates our country’s territorial sovereignty,” said Captain Jian-chang Yu at the National Defense Ministry’s media briefing Wednesday morning. Pelosi’s trip has heightened U.S.-China tensions more than visits by other members of Congress because of her high-level position as leader of the House of Representatives. She is the first speaker of the house to come to Taiwan in 25 years, since Newt Gingrich in 1997. Tsai, thanking Pelosi for her decades of support for Taiwan, presented the speaker with a civilian honor, the Order of the Propitious Clouds. “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said. “We will firmly uphold our nation’s sovereignty and continue to hold the line of defense for democracy.” Tsai later said in a news conference, “Military exercises are unnecessary responses.” Shortly after Pelosi landed, China announced live-fire drills that reportedly started Tuesday night, as well as a four-day exercise beginning Thursday in waters on all sides of the island. China’s air force also flew a relatively large contingent of 21 war planes, including fighter jets, toward Taiwan.

One man was killed and five others were wounded in a shooting Monday night in Northeast Washington, the Metropolitan Police Department said. The circumstances of the shooting, including whether the victims even knew each other, were being investigated, Police Chief Robert J. Contee III told reporters. Also read: 2 dead after all-night shooting rampage in Vancouver, Canada The shooting occurred outside an apartment building located at 15th and F Streets Northeast, Contee said. All the victims were adult males, Contee said, and those wounded were being treated at area hospitals. Also read: 2 killed, 5 injured in shooting at Los Angeles park: Police

 Oregon authorities are investigating four additional deaths potentially linked to last week’s scorching heat wave, bringing the total number of suspected hyperthermia deaths to 14. The Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office said Monday the designation of heat-related death is preliminary and requires further investigation. Multnomah County, which is home to Portland, recorded seven deaths suspected to be related to heat, the highest of any Oregon county. Also read: Dangerous Pacific Northwest heat wave suspected in 6th death Portland and Seattle set records Sunday for most consecutive days of high temperatures. In Portland, temperatures on Sunday rose above 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 Celsius) for the seventh day in a row, a record for the city for consecutive days above that mark. Further north in Seattle, the temperature rose to 91 F (32.8 C) by early afternoon, marking a record six days above 90 F (32.2 C). Temperatures neared the triple digits nearly all of last week in the Portland area, prompting officials to open emergency overnight shelters and cooling stations. The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for both the Portland and Seattle regions lasting through late Sunday evening. Temperatures started to cool off on Monday as colder air from the Pacific blows in. Also read: Northwestern US heat wave could have hottest day on Tuesday Climate change is fueling longer heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, a region where weeklong heat spells were historically rare, according to climate experts. Residents and officials in the Northwest have been trying to adjust to the likely reality of longer, hotter heat waves following last summer’s deadly “heat dome” weather phenomenon that prompted record temperatures and deaths. About 800 people died in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia during that heat wave, which hit in late June and early July of 2021. The temperature hit an all-time high of 116 F (46.7 C) in Portland.

President Joe Biden announced Monday that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Kabul, an operation he said delivered justice and hopefully “one more measure of closure” to families of the victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The president said in an evening address from the White House that U.S. intelligence officials tracked al-Zawahri to a home in downtown Kabul where he was hiding out with his family. The president approved the operation last week and it was carried out Sunday. Al-Zawahri and the better-known Osama bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, in operation carried out by U.S. Navy SEALs after a nearly decade-long hunt. As for Al-Zawahri, Biden said, “He will never again, never again, allow Afghanistan to become a terrorist safe haven because he is gone and we’re going to make sure that nothing else happens.” “This terrorist leader is no more,” he added. Also read: Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri killed in US missile attack The operation is a significant counterterrorism win for the Biden administration just 11 months after American troops left the country after a two-decade war. The strike was carried out by the CIA, according to five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Neither Biden nor the White House detailed the CIA's involvement in the strike. Biden, however, paid tribute to the U.S. intelligence community in his remarks, noting that “thanks to their extraordinary persistence and skill” the operation was a success. Al-Zawahri’s death eliminates the figure who more than anyone shaped al-Qaida, first as bin Laden’s deputy since 1998, then as his successor. Together, he and bin Laden turned the jihadi movement’s guns to target the United States, carrying out the deadliest attack ever on American soil — the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings. The house Al-Zawahri was in when he was killed was owned by a top aide to senior Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani, according to a senior intelligence official. The official also added that a CIA ground team and aerial reconnaissance conducted after the drone strike confirmed al-Zawahri’s death. Also read: Biden tests positive for COVID-19, returns to isolation A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the operation on condition of anonymity said “zero” U.S. personnel were in Kabul. Over the 20-year war in Afghanistan, the U.S. targeted and splintered al-Qaida, sending leaders into hiding. But America’s exit from Afghanistan last September gave the extremist group the opportunity to rebuild. U.S. military officials, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said al-Qaida was trying to reconstitute in Afghanistan, where it faced limited threats from the now-ruling Taliban. Military leaders have warned that the group still aspired to attack the U.S. After his killing, the White House underscored that al-Zawahri had continued to be a dangerous figure. The senior administration official said al-Zawahri had continued to “provide strategic direction," including urging attacks on the U.S., while in hiding. He had also prioritized to members of the terror network that the United States remained al-Qaida's “primary enemy,” the official said. The 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon made bin Laden America’s Enemy No. 1. But he likely could never have carried it out without his deputy. Bin Laden provided al-Qaida with charisma and money, but al-Zawahri brought tactics and organizational skills needed to forge militants into a network of cells in countries around the world. U.S. intelligence officials have been aware for years of a network helping al-Zawahri dodge U.S. intelligence officials hunting for him, but didn’t have a bead on his possible location until recent months. Earlier this year, U.S. officials learned that the terror leader’s wife, daughter and her children had relocated to a safe house in Kabul, according to the senior administration official who briefed reporters. Officials eventually learned al-Zawahri was also at the Kabul safe house. In early April, White House deputy national security adviser Jon Finer and Biden’s homeland security adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall were briefed on this developing intelligence. Soon the intelligence was carried up to national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Sullivan brought the information to Biden as U.S. intelligence officials built “a pattern of life through multiple independent sources of information to inform the operation,” the official said. Senior Taliban figures were aware of al-Zawahri’s presence in Kabul, according to the official, who added the Taliban government was given no forewarning of the operation. Inside the Biden administration, only a small group of officials at key agencies, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, were brought into the process. Through May and June, Biden was updated several times on the growing mound of intelligence that confirmed al-Zawahri was hiding out in the home. Over the last few weeks, Biden brought together several Cabinet officials and key national security officials to scrutinize the intelligence findings. On July 1, Biden was briefed in the Situation Room about the planned operation, a briefing in which the president closely examined a scale model of the home Zawahri was hiding out in. He gave his final approval for the operation on Thursday. Al-Zawahri was on the balcony of his hideout on Sunday when two Hellfire missiles were launched from an unmanned drone, killing him. Al-Zawahri's family was in another part of the house when the operation was carried out, and no one else was believed to have been killed in the operation, the official said. “We make it clear again tonight: That no matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out,” Biden said. Al-Zawahri was hardly a household name like bin Laden, but he played an enormous role in the terror group's operations. The two terror leaders' bond was forged in the late 1980s, when al-Zawahri reportedly treated the Saudi millionaire bin Laden in the caves of Afghanistan as Soviet bombardment shook the mountains around them. Al-Zawahri, on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorist list, had a $25 million bounty on his head for any information that could be used to kill or capture him. Al-Zawhiri and bin Laden plotted the 9/11 attacks that brought many ordinary Americans their first knowledge of al-Qaida. Photos from the time often showed the glasses-wearing, mild-looking Egyptian doctor sitting by the side of bin Laden. Al-Zawahiri had merged his group of Egyptian militants with bin Laden’s al-Qaida in the 1990s. “The strong contingent of Egyptians applied organizational know-how, financial expertise, and military experience to wage a violent jihad against leaders whom the fighters considered to be un-Islamic and their patrons, especially the United States,” Steven A. Cook wrote for the Council on Foreign Relations last year. When the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan demolished al-Qaida’s safe haven and scattered, killed and captured its members, al-Zawahri ensured al-Qaida’s survival. He rebuilt its leadership in the Afghan-Pakistan border region and installed allies as lieutenants in key positions. He also reshaped the organization from a centralized planner of terror attacks into the head of a franchise chain. He led the assembling of a network of autonomous branches around the region, including in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Somalia, Yemen and Asia. Over the next decade, al-Qaida inspired or had a direct hand in attacks in all those areas as well as Europe, Pakistan and Turkey, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the 2005 transit bombings in London. More recently, the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen proved itself capable of plotting attacks against U.S. soil with an attempted 2009 bombing of an American passenger jet and an attempted package bomb the following year. But even before bin Laden’s death, al-Zawahri was struggling to maintain al-Qaida’s relevance in a changing Middle East. He tried with little success to coopt the wave of uprisings that spread across the Arab world starting in 2011, urging Islamic hard-liners to take over in the nations where leaders had fallen. But while Islamists gained prominence in many places, they have stark ideological differences with al-Qaida and reject its agenda and leadership. Nevertheless, al-Zawahri tried to pose as the Arab Spring’s leader. America “is facing an Islamic nation that is in revolt, having risen from its lethargy to a renaissance of jihad,” he said in a video eulogy to bin Laden, wearing a white robe and turban with an assault rifle leaning on a wall behind him. Al-Zawahri was also a more divisive figure than his predecessor. Many militants described the soft-spoken bin Laden in adoring and almost spiritual terms. In contrast, al-Zawahri was notoriously prickly and pedantic. He picked ideological fights with critics within the jihadi camp, wagging his finger scoldingly in his videos. Even some key figures in al-Qaida’s central leadership were put off, calling him overly controlling, secretive and divisive. Some militants whose association with bin Laden predated al-Zawahri’s always saw him as an arrogant intruder. “I have never taken orders from al-Zawahri,” Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, one of the network’s top figures in East Africa until his 2011 death, sneered in a memoir posted on line in 2009. “We don’t take orders from anyone but our historical leadership.” There had been rumors of al-Zawahri’s death on and off for several years. But a video surfaced in April of the al-Qaida leader praising a Indian Muslim woman who had defied a ban on wearing a hijab, or headscarf. That footage was the first proof in months that he was still alive. A statement from Afghanistan’s Taliban government confirmed the airstrike, but did not mention al-Zawahri or any other casualties. It said the Taliban “strongly condemns this attack and calls it a clear violation of international principles and the Doha Agreement,” the 2020 U.S. pact with the Taliban that led to the withdrawal of American forces. “Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States of America, Afghanistan, and the region,” the statement said.