Saif al-Adel, a former Egyptian special forces lieutenant-colonel and close affiliate of Osama bin Laden is al-Qaeda's "new de facto leader", according to a US State Department statement.
The statement backs the UN's report on Tuesday which also identified al-Adel as the new leader of the terrorist organization.
Since the former al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was reportedly killed in July 2022, there has been no formal announcement from the group about its new leadership.
“But in discussions in November and December many UN member states took the view that Saif al-Adel is already operating as the de facto and uncontested leader of the group,” the UN report said.
In the 1990s, al-Adel gave up military service in Egypt and joined al-Qaeda becoming its key military trainer.
He is believed to have trained some of the hijackers involved in the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in the US, the US Counter Extremism Project says.
Al-Adel is also wanted by the US authorities for the bombings of the country's embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.
According to the US officials, he was involved in the creation of Daesh* in Syria and Iraq.
* Al-Qaeda and Daesh are terrorist organizations outlawed in Russia and many other countries.