Osama bin Laden, the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was killed in an operation led by the United States, President Barack Obama confirmed in a dramatic statement at the White House late Sunday evening (Monday morning, Philippine time).
A small team of Americans carried out the attack and took custody of Bin Laden’s remains, the president said.
A jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House as word spread of Bin Laden’s death after a global manhunt that lasted nearly a decade. “Justice has been done,” Obama said.
The stunning development comes just months before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and Pentagon in Washington, orchestrated by Bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization, that killed more than 3,000 people.
The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq.
It also led to a massive overhaul of America’s entire intelligence apparatus to counter the threat of more terror attacks in their shores.
The al-Qaida organization was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.
‘Extraordinary security’
Four helicopters swooped down on Bin Laden’s compound in a Pakistani town that is home to three army regiments.
His location raised pointed questions over whether Pakistani authorities knew the whereabouts of the world’s most wanted man.
The al-Qaida chief was living in a house in the town of Abbottabad that a U.S. official said was “custom built to hide someone of significance.”
Abbottabad is 60 miles from the capital Islamabad, far from the remote mountain caves along the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal border where most intelligence assessments had put Bin Laden in recent years.
The house was close to the gate of the Kakul Military Academy, an army-run institution where top officers train.
An American administration official said the compound was built in 2005 at the end of a narrow dirt road with “extraordinary” security measures.
He said it had 12 to 18 feet walls topped with barbed wire with two security gates and no telephone or Internet service connected to it.
A Pakistan intelligence official said the property where bin Laden was staying was 3,000 square feet.
Pakistani army protection?
Critics have long accused elements of Pakistan’s security establishment of protecting Bin Laden, though Islamabad has always denied this.
Ties between the United States and Pakistan have hit a low point in recent months over the future of Afghanistan.
One Pakistani official said the choppers took off from a Pakistani air base, suggesting some cooperation in the raid.
But President Barack Obama did not thank Pakistan in his statement on Bin Laden’s death.
A witness and a Pakistani official said Bin Laden’s guards opened fire from the roof of the compound in the small northwestern town of Abbottabad, and one of the choppers crashed.
However, U.S. officials said no Americans were hurt in the operation.
The sound of at least two explosions rocked Abbottabad as the fighting raged.
It was not known how long Bin Laden had been in Abbottabad, which is less than half a day’s drive from the border region with Afghanistan.
‘Obama 1, Osama 0’
Salman Riaz, a film actor, said that five months ago he and a crew tried to do some filming next to the house, but were told to stop by two men who came out. “They told me that this is haram (“forbidden” in Islam),” he said.
Abbottabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1:15 a.m. local time.
“I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast,” he said.
“In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field.”
News of Bin Laden’s death resulted in celebrations across the United States.
Americans, joyous at the release of a decade’s frustration, streamed to the site of the World Trade Center, the gates of the White House and smaller but no less jubilant gatherings, cheering, waving flags and belting the national anthem.
Ground zero, more familiar these past 10 years for bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace” and solemn speeches and arguments over what to build to honor the Sept. 11 dead, became, for the first time, a place of revelry.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for this day,” Lisa Ramaci, a New Yorker whose husband was a freelance journalist killed in the Iraq war, said early yesterday.
“I think it’s a relief for New York tonight just in the sense that we had this 10 years of frustration just building and building, wanting this guy dead, and now he is, and you can see how happy people are.”
She was holding a flag and wearing a T-shirt depicting the twin towers and, in crosshairs, Bin Laden. Nearby, a man held up a cardboard sign that said, “Obama 1, Osama 0.”
Uptown in Times Square, dozens stood together on a clear spring night and broke into applause when a New York Fire Department sport utility vehicle drove by, flashed its lights and sounded its siren. A man held an American flag, and others sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” /AP