The United States carried out over the weekend a "counter-terrorism operation against a major target within al-Qaeda" in Afghanistan, a senior US administration official said on Monday.

"The operation was successful and caused no civilian casualties," the source told reporters.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak at 7:30 p.m. on a "successful counterterrorism operation," according to the White House, which did not provide further details.

This announcement comes almost a year after the chaotic withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, which had allowed the Taliban to regain control of the country twenty years later.

The United States had also announced in mid-July that it had killed the leader of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria, Maher al-Agal, during a drone strike, an operation which had “considerably weakened the capacity of the "IS to prepare, finance and conduct its operations in the region", according to a spokesman for the American army.

The United States would have killed the leader of Al-Qaeda, Zawahiri, according to several American media.