serie of photos of the CIA operation
Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind al-Qaida, is dead, President Obama announced. President Obama said Bin Laden was killed in a ”targeted and highly sensitive intelligence operation”. last night on 1th May 2011.
U.S. troops and CIA operatives shot and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a city of 500,000 people that houses a military base and a military academy. A gun battle broke out when the troops descended upon the building in which bin Laden was located, and bin Laden was shot in the head.
The operation started with an intelligence lead last August, and culminated in an operation involving a “small team of Americans”. “After a firefight they killed bin Laden.” None of the Americans was killed. Pakistani co-operation “helped to lead us to him”.
Bin Laden’s capture comes eight years to the day that President George Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq.
This is a turning point in the global “war on terrorism” that has been waged since 9/11 – and the news will reverberate around the world. News of bin Laden’s death brought cheers and a sense of relief worldwide.
Some analysts fear bin Laden’s death could spark a precipitous US withdrawal from the region, with the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan still unresolved. It will likely also reconfigure relations with Pakistan, where the CIA is engaged in a controversial assassination campaign against senior al-Qaida figures using Predator and Reaper drones.