U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that Hamza bin Laden, son of late al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden, has been killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. 

"The loss of Hamza bin Laden not only deprives al-Qaeda of important leadership skills and the symbolic connection to his father, but undermines important operational activities of the group," Trump said in a statement issued by the White House. 

The statement did not specify the timing of the operation. 

It was reported by several media outlets on July 31 that Hamza had been killed, citing a U.S. official with knowledge of the matter. But Saturday's statement represents the first time the U.S. government has confirmed the operation.

Hamza, the 15th of Osama bin Laden's 20 children and a son of his third wife, was thought to be about 30 years old.  

He was at his father's side in Afghanistan before the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. He also spent time with his father in Pakistan after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan pushed much of al-Qaeda's senior leadership there, according to the Brookings Institution. 

The U.S. State Department designated Hamza a global terrorist in 2017 after he called for acts of terrorism in Western capitals and threatened to take revenge against the United States for killing his father in 2011. 

Hamza was "emerging as a leader in the al-Qaeda franchise," the State Department said in announcing a 1 million U.S. dollar bounty on his head in February 2019.  

(With input from Reuters, AFP) 

(Cover: An undated file video grab released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency on November 1, 2017, and taken by researchers from the Federation for Defense of Democracies' Long War Journal, shows an image of Hamza bin Laden. /AFP Photo)