US Navy SEALs kill bin Laden with shot to head

death of Osama bin Laden the mastermind behind al-Qaeda . Al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday in a firefight with US forces deep inside Pakistan, President Barack Obama said, declaring \"justice has been done\" a decade after the September 11 attacks.  
US Navy SEALs led the commando operation in Pakistan that ended the life of 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden with a bullet to the head, a US official told AFP. The SEALs, which stands for Sea, Air, Land, are elite troops used for some of the riskiest anti-terrorism missions, as well as behind-the-lines reconnaissance and unconventional warfare. On loan to the CIA for the mission Sunday night into Monday, the SEAL team launched the assault from helicopters on a heavily fortified villa in a city near Islamabad that US intelligence had identified as bin Laden’s hideout.“Responsibility for the raid is Leon Panetta’s; It was executed by Navy SEALs,” said the official, referring by name to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
CNN described the operation as a “kill mission” but US officials told AFP bin Laden “resisted as we expected.” The Al-Qaeda leader’s body was buried at sea, two officials said on condition of anonymity.“We wanted to avoid a situation where it would become a shrine,” one of the officials said.And there was no time for negotiations with other countries to arrange for a possible burial, the official told AFP.
DNA tests have confirmed that Osama bin Laden is dead, a senior US official said Monday.
The official confirmed on condition of anonymity that a DNA match had been established with bin Laden’s body before it was buried at sea after the raid.  
According to Islamic practice and tradition a body should be buried within 24 hours.  
Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world\'s most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the US decided to bury him at sea. The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.
US forces Reuters reports, were led to a fortress-like three-story building  in Abbottabad, a town about 60 miles north of Islamabad.after more than four years tracking one of bin Laden\'s most trusted couriers, whom U.S.
officials said was identified by men captured after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. \"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.

Bin Laden was finally found, more than 9-1/2 years after the 2001 attacks on the United States, after authorities discovered in August 2010 that the courier lived with his brother and their families in an unusual and extremely high-security building, officials said.
\"When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound,\" a senior administration official said.  \"The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harbored a high-value terrorist target.
The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden,\" another administration official said.
The building, 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 dirt road, but some other homes have been built nearby in the six years since it went up, officials said.
Intense security measures included 12- to 18-foot (3.6 meters to 5.5 meters) outer walls topped with barbed wire and internal walls that sectioned off different parts of the compound, officials said.
Two security gates restricted access, and residents burned their trash, rather than leaving it for collection as did their neighbors, officials said.
Few windows of the three-story home faced the outside of the compound, and a terrace had a seven-foot (2.1 metres) privacy wall, officials said. \"It is also noteworthy that the property is valued at approximately $1 million but has no telephone or Internet service connected to it,\" an administration official said. \"The brothers had no explainable source of wealth.\"
U.S. analysts realized that a third family lived there in addition to the two brothers, and the age and makeup of the third family matched those of the relatives - including his youngest wife - they believed would be living with bin Laden. \"Everything we saw, the extremely elaborate operational security, the brothers\' background and their behavior and the location of the compound itself was perfectly consistent with what our experts expected bin Laden\'s hide-out to look like,\" another Obama administration official said.
The death of the reviled US enemy sparked jubilation across the United States, with a huge crowd gathering outside the White House just before midnight, chanting \"USA, USA\" as Obama made a dramatic nationwide address to Americans. \"Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda, and a terrorist who\'s responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children,\" Obama said. Obama said in the historic address from the White House that he had directed the US armed forces to launch an attack against a compound in Pakistan on Sunday acting on a lead that first emerged last August. \"A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties.
Pakistani intelligence officials also confirmed bin Laden\'s death. \"Yes I can confirm that he was killed in a highly sensitive intelligence operation,\" the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The official said he was unable to immediately confirm where, how or when bin Laden was killed.
Asked whether Pakistani intelligence participated in the operation he said only: \"It was a highly sensitive intelligence operation.\" US armed forces have been hunting the Saudi terror kingpin for years, an effort that was redoubled following the attacks by hijacked airliners on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon which killed 3,000 people in 2001.
But bin Laden always managed to evade US armed forces and a massive manhunt, and was most often thought to be hiding out in Pakistan and Afghanistan border areas. The death of bin Laden will raise huge questions about the future shape of Al-Qaeda and also have steep implications for US security and foreign policy 10 years into a global anti-terror campaign. It will also provoke fears that the United States and its allies will face retaliation from supporters of bin Laden and other Islamic extremist groups. The death of bin Laden will also cast a new complexion on the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan, where 100,000 troops are still in the country battling the Taliban and Al Qaeda after a decade of war.

Former president George W. Bush first said he wanted bin Laden \"dead or alive\" in the weeks after the September 11 attacks. But bin Laden frequently taunted Bush, and after he took office in 2009, Obama, with taped messages.
Bin Laden was top of America\'s most wanted list, and was blamed by Washington for masterminding a string of other attacks, including the attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Africa in 1998.
Chants of \"USA, USA\" rang out from a huge and quickly building crowd outside the White House as the news of bin Laden\'s death sent a electric charge through Washington. People cheered waved the US flag and sang the US national anthem. Despite the decade that has elapsed since the September 11 attacks, the event, one of the most traumatic in US history, still stirs raw emotions, and his demise will be celebrated across the United States. In the Upstream restaurant in the old market area of Omaha, Nebraska, owners switched TV channels from the evening\'s sports games as news of Laden\'s death trickled in. Patrons cheered and called friends to tell them of the news. \"We are going to be able to remember sitting here, you are going to remember where you where,\" said Vaughn Wickham from Spirit Lake, Iowa.
The US dollar rose against the euro and the yen when it emerged that Obama would announce the death of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, nearly 10 years after the September 11 attacks.
The dollar rose against the euro, which fetched 1.4764 dollars from 1.4864 in earlier trade.
The dollar was at 81.66 yen from 81.19 earlier.
Burial at sea is rare in Islam  though several Muslim websites say it is permitted in certain circumstances.
One is on a long voyage where the body may decay before the ship reaches land.
The other is if there is a risk of enemies digging up a land grave and exhuming or mutilating the body – a rule that could plausibly be applied in Bin Laden\'s case. For sea burial, according to alislam.org,  the body should be lowered into the water \"in a vessel of clay or with a weight tied to its feet\". The website adds: \"As far as possible it should not be lowered at a point where it is eaten up immediately by the sea predators.\"
Britons have been urged to be vigilant in the wake of the death , with embassies worldwide ordered to review their security.
Prime Minister David Cameron hailed the death as \"a great success\" but said it was not the end of terror threats.
Foreign Secretary William Hague said the network may try to reassert itself.
The Foreign Office urged Britons overseas to \"exercise caution in all public places and avoid demonstrations, large crowds of people and public events\".
Mr Cameron was phoned by US President Barack Obama before dawn on Monday UK time, a couple of hours before the president announced the news in a televised address.
\"The news Osama Bin Laden is dead will bring great relief to people across the world,\" Mr Cameron said.
He later spoke from the prime minister\'s country residence, Chequers, saying: \"It is a great success that he has been found and will no longer be able to pursue his campaign of global terror.
\"He went on: \"This news will be welcomed right across our country.
Of course, it does not mark the end of the threat we face from extremist terror - indeed we will have to be particularly vigilant in the weeks ahead. But it is, I believe, a massive step forward.\"
The US put its embassies around the world on alert, warning Americans of the possibility of al-Qaeda reprisal attacks for Bin Laden\'s killing.  
CIA director Leon Panetta warned Monday that terrorist groups \"almost certainly\" will try to avenge Osama bin Laden, the 9/11 mastermind killed in a raid in Pakistan by US commandos.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said:  \"We must remember that this is not the end of being vigilant against al-Qaeda and associated groups, and, in fact, there may be parts of al-Qaeda that will try to show that they are still in business in the coming weeks, as indeed some of them are.\"So I have already this morning asked our embassies to review their security, to make sure that vigilance is heightened - and I think that will have to be our posture for some time to come. \"This is a very serious blow to al-Qaeda, but like any organisation that has suffered a serious blow, they will want to show in some way that they are still able to operate.\"
The Home Office said the threat level to the UK from international terrorism has remained at severe since January 2010, indicating a terrorist attack is highly likely.The Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which includes representatives from 16 government departments and agencies, sets the threat level. Bin Laden was top of the US \"most wanted\" list, and President Obama said his death was \"the most significant achievement to date in our nation\'s effort to defeat al-Qaeda\".
In the attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September, 2001, 67 Britons were among the 3,000 people killed when four planes were hijacked and flown into New York\'s World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Tony Blair, UK prime minister at the time of the attacks, expressed his \"heartfelt gratitude to President Obama and to all of those who so brilliantly undertook and executed this operation\". We should never forget 9/11 was also the worst ever terrorist attack against UK civilians, and our thoughts are with all those - American, British and from nations across the world - who lost their lives and with their loved ones who remain and who live with their loss. \"The operation shows those who commit acts of terror against the innocent will be brought to justice, however long it takes.\" Today\'s news of the death of Osama Bin Laden could have a profound effect on the decisions taken about the future.”  Foreign Secretary William Hague acknowledged that there had been a \"general assumption\" that Bin Laden was hiding in the mountainous, tribal regions of Pakistan rather than the area around the capital, Islamabad.
But he added: \"I don\'t think we\'re surprised by anything any more.\" Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg added his praise - and caution - about the operation: \"This successful US operation is a major step forward and a serious blow to al-Qaeda but it does not mean that the struggle against terrorism is over.\"