Osama bin Laden killed in U.S. raid, buried at sea
Osama bin Laden was buried at sea Monday after U.S. forces raided his well-appointed hideout in Pakistan, shot him in a firefight and spirited his body out of the country aboard a helicopter, U.S. officials said.
The death of the long-hunted al-Qaeda leader, who had eluded intensive U.S. efforts to capture or kill him after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks he ordered, triggered warnings Monday that his radical Islamist network or sympathizers could try to retaliate against Americans or U.S. interests.
( ) -
It also served, U.S. officials said, to send a message to the extremist Taliban movement fighting to make a comeback in Afghanistan, where it had harbored bin Laden and al-Qaeda before being driven from power by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in November 2001. The message: give up hope of defeating U.S. and NATO forces, renounce al-Qaeda and join the political process.
Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces early Monday in Pakistan (Sunday afternoon in Washington) in what officials described as a surgical raid on his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a garrison town 72 miles by road north of the capital, Islamabad.
In a rare Sunday night address from the East Room of the White House, President Obama said a small team of U.S. personnel attacked the compound, where bin Laden had been hiding since at least last summer. During a firefight, the U.S. team killed bin Laden, 54, and took custody of his body in what Obama called “the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al-Qaeda.”
The discovery that bin Laden had been hiding in a well-populated part of Pakistan, rather than a remote location, raised new questions about the extent to which Pakistan is cooperating with the United States in combating terrorism.
U.S. forces flew to bin Laden’s hideout in helicopters about 1 a.m. Monday (4 p.m. Sunday in Washington) — reportedly from neighboring Afghanistan. Bin Laden was killed “in a firefight” after he and his guards resisted the U.S. attackers, a senior Obama administration official said. U.S. personnel identified him by facial recognition. Bin Laden was shot in the head, the Associated Press reported.
A U.S. official said bin Laden’s body was quickly transported away from Pakistan and “buried at sea,” in part because the U.S. government did not want an accessible gravesite that could become a shrine to bin Laden’s followers. The official declined to identify which body of water the corpse was taken to, or provide further details on how it was transported or handled.
The official said the body was buried “in accordance with Islamic tradition,” meaning within 24 hours of bin Laden’s death. No information was available as to whether Muslim prayers were recited or the body was ritually washed, as is usually required by Islamic law. In general, burial at sea means tipping the body overboard — wrapped, likely, in a shroud — after a brief service.
Obama said neither Americans nor civilians were harmed in the raid on bin Laden’s compound. Three other adult males were killed — two were bin Laden’s couriers and a third was his adult son — according to a senior administration official. One woman was killed when she was “used as a shield by a male combatant” and two others were injured, the official said. There were also children at the compound.
8
Comments