Hamza bin Laden, son of slain Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is dead, according to the intelligence obtained by the United States.

The NBC News quoted three unnamed US government officials as saying that the US has obtained intelligence about the death of Hamza bin Laden. The officials did not provide details of where or when he died or whether the US played a role in his death.

On being asked whether the US had intelligence that Hamza was dead, US President Donald Trump said, "I don't want to comment on that."

Hamza bin Laden is believed to have made his last public appearance in 2018. He was regarded as the likely successor to the organisation's chief Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Earlier this year, the US State Department had offered a reward of $1 million for information on the whereabouts of Hamza. The State Department had identified him as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in January 2017.

Osama bin Laden was killed on 2 May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan, during a US Navy SEAL special operation following a 10-year manhunt. </s> Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza bin Laden, who was long viewed as heir to the leadership of al-Qaeda, is dead, according to two American officials.

Hamza bin Laden, who had repeatedly threatened to attack the United States was killed in the past two years during the Trump administration, but it took time to confirm his death, the officials said.

In February, the US State Department announced a $1 million reward for information about his whereabouts. However, by then, Hamza bin Laden, who was believed to be aged about 30, had been killed — but his death had not yet been confirmed by the military and intelligence agencies.

The United States government had a role in the operation that killed him, but it is not clear precisely what that role was.

Details, including where it happened, are scarce.

The officials discussed his death on the condition of anonymity because it involved sensitive operations and intelligence gathering.

The location of bin Laden had been the subject of public speculation.

After the September 11th, 2001, attacks, members of al-Qaeda, including Hamza bin Laden, fled to Iran, where they were detained.

Since then, Hamza bin Laden had been reported to be in the Afghanistan and Pakistan border region, as well as in Syria, analysts and former officials have said.

President Donald Trump was asked Wednesday about the death, first reported by NBC News, but he declined to comment.

After the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden in a US raid in Pakistan, Hamza bin Laden was being groomed for the top leadership role in al-Qaeda by two of his father’s top lieutenants. He married a daughter of one of them.

Hamza, the son of Khairiah Sabar of Saudi Arabia, one of bin Laden’s three wives, was thought to be under house arrest in Iran at the time of his father’s death and documents recovered from the compound indicated that aides had been trying to reunite him with his father.

Hamza’s older brother Saad was killed in a 2009 US drone strike – New York Times/Reuters </s> The United States government believes Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden, is dead, according to a U.S. official.

U.S. officials have been working for some time to confirm the death of Hamza bin Laden, but recently, they found evidence that they believe corroborates his death.

Earlier this year, the U.S. government accused Hamza bin Laden of seeking to encourage attacks against the U.S.

The New York Times reports that Hamza bin Laden was killed sometime in the last two years.

The Department of State said items seized from Osama bin Laden's hiding place in Pakistan, where he was killed in 2011, indicate he was grooming Hamza bin Laden to replace him as Al Qaeda's leader. </s> Osama bin Laden's son and heir, Hamza, is dead, U.S. officials say

The officials would not provide details of how bin Laden died. The death occurred in the past 2 years, said the officials, but confirmation came recently. </s> Washington: Osama bin Laden's son Hamza bin Laden, who was long viewed as heir to the leadership of al-Qaeda and who had repeatedly threatened to attack the United States, is dead, according to two US officials.

Hamza bin Laden was killed in the past two years, during the Trump administration, but it took time to confirm his death, the officials said.

In February, the State Department announced a $US1 million reward for information about his whereabouts. However, by then, Hazma bin Laden had been killed — but his death had not yet been confirmed by the military and intelligence agencies.

The United States government had a role in the operation that killed the younger bin Laden, but it was not clear precisely what that role was. Details, including where it happened, were scarce. The officials discussed his death on the condition of anonymity because it involved sensitive operations and intelligence gathering. </s> Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, chosen heir to the leadership of Al-Qaeda, has been killed, US media reported Wednesday citing American officials.

NBC News said three US officials had confirmed they had information of Hamza bin Laden’s death, but gave no details of the place or date.

The New York Times subsequently cited two US officials saying they had confirmation that he was killed during the last two years in an operation that involved the United States.

Questioned by reporters in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump did not confirm or deny the NBC report.

“I don’t want to comment on it,” he said.

Both reports suggested that bin Laden may have been killed well before the US State Department announced a $1 million bounty on his head in February 2019.

The 15th of Osama bin Laden’s 20 children and a son of his third wife, Hamza, thought to be about 30 years old, was “emerging as a leader in the Al-Qaeda franchise,” the State Department said in announcing the reward.

Sometimes dubbed the “crown prince of jihad, he had put out audio and video messages calling for attacks on the United States and other countries, especially to avenge his father’s killing by US forces in Pakistan in May 2011, the department said.

Documents seized in the raid on his father’s house in Abbottabad suggested Hamza was being groomed as heir to the Al-Qaeda leadership.

US forces also found a video of the wedding of Hamza to the daughter of another senior Al-Qaeda official that is believed to have taken place in Iran.

Hamza bin Laden’s whereabouts have never been pinpointed. He was believed to have been under house arrest in Iran but reports suggest he also may have resided in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.

The group behind the deadly September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Al-Qaeda’s prominence as a radical Islamist group has faded over the past decade in the shadow of the Islamic State group.

But the proliferation of branches and associated jihadist groups in Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria and elsewhere have underscored its continuing potency.

Hamza bin Laden was not targeted just because he was bin Laden’s son, said Rita Katz, executive director of the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremists.

“He was one of Al-Qaeda’s loudest voices calling for attacks in the West and giving directives. He, with Al-Qaeda’s help, was positioning himself to lead the global jihadi movement,” Katz said on Twitter.

“He was seen as a future leader who would unite the global jihad. Thus, if he is indeed dead, it will be a major blow to the movement,” she said.

At his father’s side in Afghanistan before the 9/11 attacks, Hamza learnt how to handle weapons, and ranted in his thin voice against Americans, Jews and “Crusaders” in videos uploaded online.

In 2016 Al-Qaeda released a video message in which he urged Islamic State and other jihadists in Syria to unite, claiming that the fight in the war-torn country paves the way to “liberating Palestine.”

“There is no longer an excuse for those who insist on division and disputes now that the whole world has mobilised against Muslims,” he said.

In a later message that year he called on Saudi youth to overthrow the kingdom’s rulers, telling them to enlist in the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to gain battlefield experience.

In 2017 he was placed on the US terrorist blacklist, seen as a potent future figurehead for the group then led by Osama bin Laden’s former deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.

“With the Islamic State ‘caliphate’ apparently on the verge of collapse, Hamza is now the figure best placed to reunify the global jihadi movement,” former FBI special agent and Al-Qaeda specialist Ali Soufan wrote at the time of his blacklisting. – AFP </s> The U.S. government is offering $1 million for help tracking down the son of the late terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

A State Department notice Thursday says the reward will be paid for help locating Hamza bin Laden in any country as part of its "rewards for justice" program.

The announcement says bin Laden's son has emerged as a leader of the terrorist group al-Qaeda. His father was killed in a U.S. military raid in Pakistan in May 2011.

Hamza bin Laden was named a "specially designated global terrorist" in January 2017. He has released audio and video messages calling for attacks against the U.S. and its allies.

Al-Qaeda was responsible for the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. and other attacks around the globe.

Hamza bin Laden was believed to be in Pakistan not long before the 2011 raid that killed five people in total.

Hours after the U.S. reward announcement, the Saudi government announced that it was stripping bin Laden of citizenship.

The move from Saudi Arabia's interior ministry mirrors a similar declaration for his father in 1994. by that point, Osama bin Laden had been given sanctuary in Sudan, moving later in the decade to Afghanistan. </s> The U.S. has reportedly obtained intelligence that the son of Osama bin Laden and potential heir to his terrorist empire, Hamza bin Laden, is dead.

It is unclear whether the U.S. played a role in Hamza bin Laden's death or whether the death had been confirmed, according to NBC News, which reported the intelligence on Wednesday citing three U.S. officials.

No further details were provided about when, where or how Hamza bin Laden is thought to have died.

In March, the State Department put out at $1 million bounty for information leading to the capture of Hamza bin Laden, who is roughly age 30.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com on Wednesday.

According to U.S. authorities, Hamza bin Laden carried forward the radial jihadist ambitions of his deceased father, who was the leader of Al-Qaeda and masterminded the terrorist attacks on 9/11.

Hamza bin Laden released audio and video messages on the Internet, calling on his followers to launch attacks against the United States and its Western allies, according to the Department of Justice.

He also threatened attacks against the U.S. in revenge for the May 2011 killing of his father by SEAL Team 6 inside a compound in Pakistan.

Hamza bin Laden's last known public statement was released by Al-Qaeda's media arm in 2018, in which he called for followers in Saudi Arabia to rise in revolt against the monarchy.

Hamza bin Laden is married to a daughter of Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, an Al-Qaeda senior leader who was indicted and charged by a federal grand jury in November 1998 for his role in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.

A video of Hamza’s wedding was found in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound and released by the CIA in 2017.

Letters seized from the compound where Osama bin Laden was killed indicate that he was grooming Hamza to replace him as leader of Al-Qaeda.

Hamza bin Laden is believed to have been born in 1989 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The location of Hamza bin Laden, sometimes dubbed the 'crown prince of jihad', has been the subject of speculation for years with reports of him living in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iran.

Some believed that he spent years with his mother in Iran, despite Al-Qaeda's strident denunciations of the Shiite branch of Islam that dominates the country.

Observers speculated that the clerical regime in Tehran kept him under house arrest as a way to maintain pressure on rival Saudi Arabia as well as on Al-Qaeda, dissuading the Sunni militants from attacking Iran.

On March 1, 2019, Saudi Arabia announced that it had revoked Hamza bin Laden's citizenship, concurrent with the reward being announced by U.S. authorities.

At that time, the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden exclusively told DailyMailTV that he believed Hamza bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan, protected by drug lords.

'I've heard the Iranian thing, I'm not buying a lot of that. I think they did keep some Al-Qaeda guys in there just because the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend,' O'Neill said.

Rob O'Neill told DailyMailTV host Jesse Palmer: 'I liked that the State Department put out $1 million reward even though I think he's worth more than that. It's a lot of money for someone that might turn him in - but $5 million is better. The more they offer, the more chances that someone's going to turn him in.

'It will come down to human intelligence - who saw him and where. You have to wade through the lies because a lot of people will say they saw him now, to try and get the money.'

Al-Qaeda's September 11, 2001 attacks were the largest terrorist loss of life on U.S. soil, claiming the lives of 2,977 victims and sparked the U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan.

O'Neill was a member of SEAL Team 6 which stormed Osama bin Laden's compound under cover of darkness in Abbottabad, Pakistan, almost eight years ago after a decade of work by multiple U.S. military intelligence agencies had pinpointed a concrete location.

He reacted to reports of Hamza bin Laden's death on Twitter Wednesday, writing simply: 'Told ya.' </s> The son and heir-apparent to Osama bin Laden is reportedly dead, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

Since U.S. Special Forces killed bin Laden during the famous raid on his Pakistani compound in 2011, there have been questions around who could fill his void in Al-Qaeda. While he had several lieutenants who took command, the heir-apparent seemed to be his son, Hamza bin Laden.

Hamza bin Laden, who has been in hiding since 2011, released a public statement in 2018 calling for the Arabian Peninsula to rise and overthrow their respective governments, specifically calling out Saudi Arabia.

Reports from 2017 also suggested Hamza bin Laden was being groomed to take a leadership role in Al-Qaeda in the next few years. A piece written by counterterror expert and former FBI agent Ali Soufan warned that "Hamza is being prepared for a leadership role in the organization his father founded." He also said Hamza bin Laden was "perceived favorably by the jihadi rank-and-file" and could "reunify the global jihadi movement" after ISIS' power was weakened.

The U.S. State Department in February began offering $1 million for information for Hamza bin Laden's whereabouts. He was described on Twitter as "an emerging al Qaeda leader" that had been threatening the U.S. and its respective allies.

U.S. officials have yet to provide any details around Hamza bin Laden's reported death or if the U.S. was involved in any manner.

Hamza bin Laden is believed to be 29 or 30 years old. His brother, Khalid, was killed along with Osama bin Laden in the 2011 Navy Seal raid.

This article was first published in IBTimes US. Permission required for reproduction.
Unnamed U.S. officials say they have received intelligence that Hamza bin Laden, son of Osama bin Laden and a wanted al-Qaeda terrorist, has been killed. The time, location and cause of death has not been disclosed.