‘I can’t comment but...’: Trump on death reports of Hamza Bin Laden

Al-Qaeda’s Hamza bin Laden was very threatening to the US, President Donald Trump said Thursday as he refrained from making any comment on news reports about the death of the son of Osama bin Laden.

“I can’t comment about that. But he was very threatening to our country. He was saying very bad things about our country,” Trump told reporters at the White House when asked if the US had any role in the death of Hamza bin Laden.

The US media on Wednesday, quoting unnamed officials, reported that Hamza bin Laden was killed during the first two years of the Trump administration. There has been no official confirmation of it from the United States.

“If confirmed, his death represents another blow to Al-Qaeda, whose ranks were hollowed out by relentless American attacks and by the rise of the Islamic State,” said The New York Times, which was the first US publication to report about it.

“But I can’t comment,” Trump said when asked about the death of the successor of Osama bin Laden.

“But I will say, Hamza bin Laden was very threatening to our country, and you can’t do that. Anything beyond that, I have no comment,” Trump said.

According to The New York Times, Hamza was not older than 30. “Because he carries the most famous name in terrorism, the younger bin Laden is able to draw on the devotion that jihadists around the world feel for his father,” the daily reported. For these reasons, Al-Qaeda hoped that Hamza bin Laden would be a unifier, appealing not just to the group’s base but also to the recruits it lost to ISIS, the US daily said.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)