Osama bin Laden's son Hamza dead, US officials say
Osama bin Laden’s son and potential successor of terrorist group al-Qaeda is dead, according to three US officials.
The officials have not revealed where or when Hamza bin Laden died or if the US had anything to do with his death, according to NBC News.
US President Donald Trump told reporters: “I don’t want to comment on that,” when asked on Wednesday about the reports.
Hamza bin Laden - who is believed to have been born in 1989 - last made a public statement in 2018 through al-Qaeda’s media arm when he threatened Saudi Arabia and encouraged the people of the Arabian peninsula to revolt.
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When Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 during a raid on his Abbottabad compound in Pakistan, they did not find Hamza, but did seize letters that suggested Osama wanted his son to join him there and was grooming him to be a future leader.
In a September 2017 article, counter-terror expert and former FBI agent Ali Soufan said that "Hamza is being prepared for a leadership role in the organisation his father founded" and is "likely to be perceived favourably by the jihadi rank-and-file”.
With so-called Islamic State’s "caliphate" then on the verge of collapse (it officially fell in March 2019), Mr Soufan wrote, Hamza “is now the figure best placed to reunify the global jihadi movement”.
In 2017, the CIA released footage of Hamza bin Laden which was captured during the Abbottabad raid. It was the first time he had been pictured as an adult
In February, the US State Department announced it would pay as much as $1 million (£825,000) for information on Hamza bin Laden's whereabouts.
The department's Rewards for Justice Program described the younger bin Laden on Twitter as "an emerging al-Qaeda leader" who "has threatened attacks against the United States and allies".
Hamza moved with his father to Afghanistan in 1996, when Osama declared war on the US, and appeared in al-Qaeda propaganda videos.
As leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden oversaw operations against Western targets that culminated in the September 11 attacks on New York's World Trade Center and on the Pentagon in 2001.