Egyptian Ayman Al Zawahiri, considered Osama bin Laden's deputy, was injured Monday in an American air raid, a provincial military chief said Tuesday.
The report came from Haji Mohammad Zaman, military chief of eastern Nangarhar province, who said earlier that bin Laden's financial manager, Ali Mahmud, had been killed Monday by a US bomb.
Al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian physician who founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, was said to be the number two man in bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Some have also called him bin Laden's mentor and the real brains in the movement.
The report of his wounding comes as US forces zeroed in on the sprawling Tora Bora cave complex south of here where Zaman said Tuesday that bin Laden, wanted for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, was holed up.
Another top aide to bin Laden, his military commander Mohammad Atef, was killed in an airstrike near Kabul last month – (AFP)
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