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Tuesday, May 3, 2011

'Good Day for America', says Obama...


Washington:  Calling it a "good day for America," President Obama said on Monday that the death of Osama bin Laden had made the world "a better place," as new details emerged about the overnight raid and firefight in Pakistan that killed him. (Watch: Obama on Osama's death)

"The world is safer," Mr. Obama said as he appeared at a White House ceremony bestowing the Medal of Honor to two soldiers killed in the Korean War. "It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden."

Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda and the most hunted man in the world, was found not in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistani-Afghan border where he has long been presumed to be sheltered, but in a large compound in the city of Abbottabad, about an hour's drive north from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

The compound, only about a third of a mile from a military academy of the Pakistani Army, is at the end of a narrow dirt road and is roughly eight times the size of other homes in the area. It has no telephone or Internet connections. When American operatives converged on the residence early on Monday morning, Bin Laden "resisted the assault force" and was shot in the head and killed near the end of an intense 40-minute gun battle, senior administration officials said.

Osama was just 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy...!!

Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was hiding in a massive compound, worth a million US dollars, located just 800 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy near Abbottabad city, in the country's northwest when he was killed in a pre-dawn raid by US special forces today.

Local residents said the compound was bought by a man they knew as Arshad Khan, believed to a resident of Charsadda in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa tribal region.

A two-storey building was constructed in the compound in 2005 and those living inside did not mingle with local residents of the area near Abbottabad, 120 km from Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

Pakistani troops sealed off the compound and blocked all roads leading to it hours after the operation that resulted in the death of bin Laden, one of his sons, two suspected couriers and a woman who was being used as a human shield.