Husam Abd al-Rauf, considered to be second in command of al-Qaida and a prominent figure on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, was killed late Saturday night by the Afghan military in central Afghanistan. The United States National Counter-Terrorism Center confirmed the elimination of al-Rauf, who is also known as Abu Muhsin al-Masri, calling it “a major setback” for the terrorist organization. Earlier on Saturday, a suicide bombing at a school in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, killed 24 people and injured 57 more, most of them young students. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, though the terror group offered no evidence. Last week, the Afghan government and its rival, the extremist Taliban organization that ruled the country and harbored al-Qaida terrorists prior to the 2001 American invasion, agreed to restart negotiations over a power-sharing agreement. Earlier this year, the US signed a deal with the Taliban by which Washington would withdraw its forces from Afghanistan in return for a peaceful transition to a joint Taliban-Afghan government.
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