US warns threat of terror reprisals grow in wake of al-Qaeda leader killing

Raffaello Pantucci, a counterterrorism expert and a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London said although Al Qaeda's days are numbered, there is a power vacuum to be filled. “There are a lot of affiliate groups that could still take up the mantle, but I think the iteration of Al Qaeda that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks has been pretty soundly thrashed at this point,” he told NBC. “But a lot of the problems which created the grievances, which created a space for Al Qaeda to grow in the first place, haven’t gone away. And so a lot of the kindling is still potentially there.”