AFP,AFP
May 3, 2011, 7:44 am
One of Osama bin Laden's wives acted as a human shield in an unsuccessful bid to save the Al-Qaeda leader's life before he was killed in a raid by US special forces, a top US official said Monday.
"There was family at that compound, and there was a female who was, in fact, in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a shield to shield bin Laden from the incoming fire," counter-terrorism official John Brennan said.
Pressed on reports the woman shot dead by Navy SEALs during a firefight at a compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan was one of bin Laden's four wives, Brennan told a White House briefing: "That's my understanding."
Brennan said it was not entirely clear "whether or not bin Laden or the son or whatever put her there or she put herself there" or whether the Al-Qaeda chief himself fired rounds during the exchange.
"From a visual perspective, here is bin Laden who has been calling for attacks, living in this million dollar plus compound, living in an area that's far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield," he said.
"I think it really just speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years, and so again looking at what bin Laden was doing, hiding there while he's putting other people out there to carry out attacks, again, just speaks to, I think, the nature of the individual he was."
In addition to the woman, Bin Laden was killed by a bullet to the head and senior US officials said two brothers believed to be his couriers and one of the Al-Qaeda chief's adult sons also perished in the raid.
Bin Laden dead as America rejoices
Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was shot dead deep inside Pakistan in a night-time helicopter raid by US commandos, ending a decade-long manhunt for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.
President Barack Obama on Monday hailed bin Laden's death, saying the "world is safer, it is a better place", a day after he announced the success of the operation in a dramatic televised address, noting "justice has been done."
DNA tests confirmed the body was that of bin Laden a senior US official said after the daring raid on the al-Qaeda leader's compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, less than two hours' drive north of Islamabad.
The carnage rained down on New York and Washington by hijacked passenger planes on September 11, 2001 set in train a war in Afghanistan against bin Laden's Taliban protectors and a decade of tumult as the United States then went to war in Iraq.
World leaders welcomed the news but warned that al-Qaeda's willingness to wreak havoc was undimmed and that the possibility of reprisal attacks meant vigilance was more important than ever.
Pakistan's main Taliban faction threatened to attack Pakistan and the US, calling them "the enemies of Islam".
"If he has become a martyr, it is a great victory for us because martyrdom is the aim of all of us," spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by phone.
An internet outlet for official al-Qaeda messages accepted its leader's killing and eulogised him as a "knight" who sacrificed his soul and money to fight the United States, monitoring group SITE said.
Hundreds took to the streets in Pakistan's city of Quetta in the country's first rally to honour bin Laden, burning a US flag and chanting anti-American slogans.
Obama said he had directed US special forces to attack the heavily-fortified compound after a tip-off that first emerged last August.
"A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability," the president said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."
Bin Laden's body was buried at sea having been administered Islamic religious rites, US officials said. "We wanted to avoid a situation where it would become a shrine," one said.
The body, which was wrapped in a white sheet and placed in a weighted bag, "was placed on a prepared flat-board... (and) eased into the sea," a separate senior defence official said.
Elite troops from the US Navy SEALs carried out the assault, which lasted less than 40 minutes, killing bin Laden with a bullet to the head, another US official told AFP.
The SEALs, which stands for Sea, Air, Land, are used for some of the riskiest anti-terrorism missions and were loaned to the CIA for the mission.
Footage taken by the US network ABC inside the house showed blood on the floor in one room and broken computers in another, stripped of their hard drives.
Explosions, helicopters clattering overhead and gunfire tore locals from their sleep as they rushed to see what was going on, residents said.
Ejaz Mahmood, an Abbottabad tailor, said he heard a blast in the early hours and "saw a fireball coming down from the air".
One helicopter in the raid went down due to "mechanical failure" but was blown up by its crew, who left the compound along with the assault force on another chopper, a US official said.
Residents were stunned when they switched on their TV sets after daybreak to hear Obama announce that bin Laden had been killed in their home town, which was soon engulfed by a heavy Pakistani security presence.
"We heard ambulance sirens and security people shouting. We saw fire and flames coming out," according to another resident who was too frightened to give his name.
Senior US officials said two brothers believed to be bin Laden's couriers and one of his adult sons were also killed in the raid, while a woman who was used as a human shield perished.
Officials said they were stunned when intelligence reports first revealed the elaborate security at the compound, with four-to-six metre high walls topped with barbed wire.
"Everything we saw, the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers' background and their behaviour, and the location and the design of the compound itself, was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden's hideout to look like," one senior US official said.
Until now, bin Laden had always managed to evade US forces, despite a $US25 million bounty, and was most often thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistani border.
His presence in Abbottabad - a leafy town that is home to an elite Pakistani military academy - raised new questions about the Islamabad government's zeal for prosecuting the war on terror.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said "cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding," but US officials earlier insisted Islamabad was not informed about the operation in advance.
Asked in an AFP interview about the extent of Pakistani cooperation, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said: "I don't know the details, I don't know minute details, but in short we have intelligence cooperation."
He described bin Laden's death as a "great victory".
But leaders in both Afghanistan and India said bin Laden's discovery so close to Islamabad vindicated their claims of double-dealing by their nuclear-armed neighbour.
George W Bush, US president at the time of the 9/11 attacks when about 3000 people died, said bin Laden's death was a "victory for America".
"The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done," he said.
In a spontaneous eruption of joy, thousands gathered outside the gates of the White House, cheering, waving US flags and shouting "USA, USA". Another large crowd gathered at Ground Zero in New York, singing "God Bless America".
Share prices rallied worldwide and the US dollar rose on currency markets.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon described the killing of bin Laden as a "watershed moment" in the global fight against terrorism.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy congratulated the US for its "tenacity" in hunting down bin Laden while British Prime Minister David Cameron said his death would bring "great relief" to people worldwide.
But the US State Department warned of the potential for reprisals against Americans with CIA director Leon Panetta saying that terrorist groups "almost certainly" would try to avenge bin Laden.
Iran meanwhile said bin Laden's death had removed "any excuse" for the US and its allies to deploy forces in the Middle East under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
Born in Riyadh in 1957, bin Laden was the son of a construction tycoon whose riches enabled the future al-Qaeda leader to fund Islamic fighters waging war against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
He went on to build a many-tentacled extremist group that earned global prominence by bombing US embassies in East Africa in 1998.
But both in 1998 and after 9/11, bin Laden was unrepentant about what he called his divinely ordained mission against the United States and Israel.
"Jihad will continue," he said not long after September 11, 2001. "Even if I am not around."
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86 Comments
9Thumbs UpThumbs Down1Mick D2 hours, 27 minutes agoReport Abuse
RUBBISH!!!!
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1Thumbs UpThumbs Down0moose2 hours, 26 minutes agoReport Abuse
Where's the stuff some of us simpletons call PROOF
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0Thumbs UpThumbs Down2Mick D2 hours, 25 minutes agoReport Abuse
...what next? They were frying up a Christian baby for supper? Now the baloney is really going to kick in!
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1Thumbs UpThumbs Down0Basil D2 hours, 22 minutes agoReport Abuse
Bloody coward
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3Thumbs UpThumbs Down1parvathi2 hours, 18 minutes agoReport Abuse
Why people are so blind? where is the evidence?
1 Reply
0Thumbs UpThumbs Down0Lord Ian of Glencoe2 hours, 15 minutes agoReport Abuse
This burial at sea thing seems odd ! I hope the west will be shown visual evidence of his death as otherwise it is now sitting on the ocean floor ! ( suposedly )
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0Thumbs UpThumbs Down0Ken2 hours, 11 minutes agoReport Abuse
Time marches on
1 Reply
5Thumbs UpThumbs Down0boatie2 hours, 10 minutes agoReport Abuse
I am sure that proof will be forthcoming. In the meantime, I am going to have a few beers with my mate Elvis - he is stil alive, you know.
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2Thumbs UpThumbs Down0My Opinion Counts2 hours, 10 minutes agoReport Abuse
They got rid of his body awefully quickly!! Bit sus!!!! Where is the proof of his death now that the world needs to see??? At the bottom of the ocean- if that really is him!!!!
1 Reply
4Thumbs UpThumbs Down1Gen2 hours, 9 minutes agoReport Abuse
Since when does throwing your wife in front of you for protection count as martrydom! Hopefully that cowardly act will see that even his own 'gods' turn their back on him - irony!
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0Thumbs UpThumbs Down0harry potter4 minutes agoReport Abuse
want to see his dead face then im goona beleive
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0Thumbs UpThumbs Down0Jack1 minute agoReport Abuse
I guess we all have an opinion, but I'm perplexed that people see it as a celebration. As a result of the conflict the approximate number of of people killed hovers around 919,967 and the total maimed is 1,739,547 - 94% of those killed are civilians. I guess it does not matter if other humans are killed as long as it is not your own - so lets jump for joy and prove to yourselves how deluded society has become.
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0Thumbs UpThumbs Down0jm27 seconds agoReport Abuse
How anyone can seriously believe this @#$% about bin laden being killed yesterday is as thick as two planks.Bammy needed an injection into his popularity and what better than to dig up osamas bones. No wonder these crooks get away with this type of stuff.
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0Thumbs UpThumbs Down0Rajen16 seconds agoReport Abuse
A million dollar compound was where this mass murderer was holed up according to media reports. But it doesn't look it, does it? It's not like the mansions where oil sheiks and golf ball hitters live , is it? Can the factual value of the property be acertained? I am sure President Zadari could help sort this out for us. He is said to be very good in money matters.
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