Washington - US forces finally found al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden not in a mountain cave on Afghanistan’s border, but with his youngest wife in a million-dollar compound in a summer resort just over an hour’s drive from Pakistan’s capital, US officials said.
A small US team conducted a helicopter raid on the compound on Sunday afternoon, the officials said. After 40 minutes of fighting, Bin Laden and an adult son, an unidentified woman and two men were dead.
A US official said Bin Laden went down while firing at the Seals, US Navy special forces, who stormed his compound.
An official familiar with the operation says Bin Laden was hit by a barrage of carefully aimed return fire.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because aspects of the operation remain classified.
The official said two dozen Seals in night-vision goggles dropped into the high-walled compound by sliding down ropes from Chinook helicopters in the raid.
US officials say Bin Laden was killed near the end of the 40-minute raid.
The Seals retrieved Bin Laden’s body and turned the remaining detainees over to Pakistani authorities.
US forces were led to the fortress-like three-storey building after more than four years tracking one of Bin Laden’s most trusted couriers, whom US officials said was identified by men captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US.
“Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al-Qaeda couriers trusted by Bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with or protected by Bin Laden,” a senior administration official said in a briefing for reporters.
In the end, it was a courier that gave away Bin Laden’s hiding place practically out in the open, only 50km outside the capital, Islamabad.
But it had come after a nearly 10-year search.
The first break came years after terrorist suspects grilled by US officials “flagged for us individuals who may have been providing direct support to Bin Laden”, senior Obama administration officials told reporters on condition of anonymity.
“One courier in particular had our constant attention,” one official said.
The hunt was frustrated because detainees could only give his nickname and “nom de guerre”. He was a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US, who is in custody at Guantanamo Bay.
It wasn’t until four years ago that the CIA, working with other US intelligence organisations, uncovered the courier’s identity. It took another two years of “persistent effort” to find the general area where the courier and a brother operated in Pakistan.
“Still, we were unable to pinpoint exactly where they lived, due to extensive operational security on their part,” an official said.
In August 2010, they finally found the compound where the brothers lived – a million-dollar, well-fortified mansion in an affluent area where retired Pakistan military officers lived.
“When we saw the compound … we were shocked by what we saw,” an official said.
It was about eight times larger than other homes in the area, with four-to-six metre high walls topped with barbed wire.
Then there were other signs: the residents of the compound burnt their rubbish, unlike their neighbours who put it out for collection.
There were few outside windows in the compound.
And it had no telephone or internet connections.
The compound building, said to be about eight times the size of other nearby houses, sat on a large plot of land that was relatively secluded when it was built in 2005.
When it was constructed, it was on the outskirts of Abbottabad’s centre, at the end of a gravel road, but some other homes have been built nearby in the six years since it went up, officials said.
The intense security measures included the outer walls and internal walls that sectioned off different parts of the compound, officials said.
Two security gates at the compound restricted access.
“It is also noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately $1 million (R6.5m), but has no telephone or internet service connected to it,” a US administration official said.
“The brothers had no explainable source of wealth,” the official added.
Intelligence analysts learnt there was a third family living there, in addition to the families of the courier and his brother.
The best assessment, the analysts said, was that the third resident was “most likely” Bin Laden, with several family members, including his youngest wife.
As confidence mounted, US president Barack Obama finally gave the signal – after chairing five national security meetings, the last of them on Friday – to raid the compound.
Early on Sunday, in the “early morning hours in Pakistan”, the assault force moved on its target.
The raid was politically sensitive as it was carried out inside Pakistan by US operatives – possibly including CIA agents, but that was not specified by the official – in a civilian neighbourhood on a fortified compound, making it an “especially dangerous operation”.
The team used two helicopters to get to the compound, where they spent “under 40 minutes” and avoided contact with local Pakistani authorities.
The Pakistani version of Britain’s elite Sandhurst military academy is located within a stone’s throw of the compound.
Bin Laden “did resist the assault force” and “he was killed in a firefight”, an official added.
In addition to Bin Laden, four others were killed, he said.
Three men who were believed to be the brothers and an adult son of Bin Laden’s, and a woman who “was used as a shield by a male combatant”, the official said.
Two other women were injured, officials said. - Cape Times