President Obama announced late this evening that U.S. forces had killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and recovered and identified his body. He said a team of Americans killed Osama in a firefight, suffered no casualties and avoided civilian casualties. Pakistan assisted in the operation.
"Tonight, I can report to the people of the United States and the world, the United States had carried an operation that has killed Osama Bin Laden, a terrorist responsible for killing thousands of innocent people," Obama said in a statement.
Others Al-Qaeda members also died. A U.S. helicopter apparently crashed due to mechanical failure but there were no casualities.
"Today, at my direction, the United States carried out that operation... they killed Osama Bin Laden and took custody of his body," the president said at a surprise news conference.
As the news spread on TV and social networks thousands of cheering people surrounded the White House. Thousands gathered at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.
It is a major victory for Obama and nations vicitimized by Bin Laden's terror. Although it probably won't shut down Al-Qaeda, he has been a symbol who will be hard to replace.
It also changes the equation in Afghanistan. It has been estimated that there are only 100 Al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, and therefore the U.S. could begin pulling troops out sooner.
Presumably the body was identified definitively, possibly with DNA.
CNN said Bin Laden, 54, was killed in a mansion in the city of Abbotabad, not far from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. A small team of Navy Seals shot Obama, CNN said.
He was born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family. After he finished college in 1979 Bin Laden went to Afghanistan to join the war against the Russian invasion.
He later became involved in other Islamic terrorist groups.
Wikipedia gives this report on his activities: "It is believed that the first bombing attack involving bin Laden was the December 29, 1992 bombing of the Gold Mihor Hotel in Aden in which two people were killed.[68]
It was after this bombing that al-Qaeda was reported to have developed its justification for the killing of innocent people. According to a fatwa issued by Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, the killing of someone standing near the enemy is justified because any innocent bystander will find their proper reward in death, going to Jannah (Paradise) if they were good Muslims and to Jahannam (hell) if they were bad or non-believers.[69] The fatwa was issued to al-Qaeda members but not the general public.
In the 1990s bin Laden's al-Qaeda assisted jihadis financially and sometimes militarily in Algeria, Egypt and Afghanistan. In 1992 or 1993 bin Laden sent an emissary, Qari el-Said, with $40,000 to Algeria to aid the Islamists and urge war rather than negotiation with the government. Their advice was heeded but the war that followed killed 150,000–200,000 Algerians and ended with Islamist surrender to the government.
Another effort by bin Laden was the funding of the Luxor massacre of November 17, 1997,[70][71][72] which killed 62 civilians, but so revolted the Egyptian public that it turned against Islamist terror. In mid-1997, the Northern Alliance threatened to overrun Jalalabad, causing Bin Laden to abandon his Nazim Jihad compound and move his operations to Tarnak Farms in the south.[73]
A later effort that did succeed was an attack on the city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. Bin Laden helped cement his alliance with his hosts the Taliban by sending several hundred of his Afghan Arab fighters along to help the Taliban kill between five and six thousand Hazaras overrunning the city.[74]
In 1998, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri co-signed a fatwa in the name of the World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders which declared the killing of North Americans and their allies an "individual duty for every Muslim" to "liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and the holy mosque (in Mecca) from their grip".[75][76] At the public announcement of the fatwa bin Laden announced that North Americans are "very easy targets." He told the attending journalists, "You will see the results of this in a very short time."[77]
In December 1998, the Director of Central Intelligence Counterterrorist Center reported to the president that al-Qaeda was preparing for attacks in the USA, including the training of personnel to hijack aircraft.[78]
At the end of 2000, Richard Clarke revealed that Islamic militants headed by bin Laden had planned a triple attack on January 3, 2000 which would have included bombings in Jordan of the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman and tourists at Mount Nebo and a site on the Jordan River, the sinking of the destroyer USS The Sullivans in Yemen, as well as an attack on a target within the United States. The plan was foiled by the arrest of the Jordanian terrorist cell, the sinking of the explosive-filled skiff intended to target the destroyer, and the arrest of Ahmed Ressam."
Source,
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/8948693-osama-bin-laden-reported-dead
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