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Bin Laden wife was human shield against raiders

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-05-03 13:05

WASHINGTON - One of Osama bin Laden's wives shielded him from attacking US Navy SEALs as the world's most-wanted terrorist was gunned down in an airborne assault on the al-Qaida leader's safehouse deep in Pakistan. He was holed up less than a mile (two kilometers) from the country's military academy and not far from the capital of Islamabad.

Details emerged Monday of the life and dramatic death of bin Laden, the day after President Barack Obama made the stunning near-midnight announcement that the al-Qaida leader had been killed.

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Obama, while assured bin Laden probably was in the compound, did not know with certainty that the 10-year hunt for the notorious son of a Saudi Arabian construction magnate was at an end until his body was carried to one of four US Special Operations helicopters that had ferried in the American force deep inside Pakistan. One of the craft was damaged on landing and blown up before the return journey to Afghanistan.

On Monday the president said the terrorist mastermind's death was "a good day for America."

The administration said DNA testing administered on the body before it was buried at sea from the deck of the USS Carl in the North Arabian Sea confirmed the man killed was indeed bin Laden.

Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation by a woman believed to be one of bin Laden's wives on site, and matching physical features like bin Laden's height all helped confirmed the identification. White House officials were deciding the merits and appropriateness of releasing a photo of bin Laden's body. He was shot above his left eye, blowing away part of his skull.

"The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden," Obama said, although security officials in the US and around the globe warned against retaliatory al-Qaida attacks.

Obama hailed the pride of those who broke joined overnight celebrations as the stunning news spread around the globe. Crowds celebrated throughout the night outside the White House and at ground zero in Lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers once stood.

Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said cooperation from the Pakistani government had helped lead US forces to the compound where he died. But a cloud of suspicion hangs over Pakistan, where authorities have routinely denied bin Laden was in the country. US officials, however, said the sprawling bin Laden compound, with its elaborate security and 18-foot (5.5-meter) walls, was built in 2005, apparently to served as the terrorist leader's safe house.

Unanswered is the obvious question of how bin Laden could have gone unnoticed just down the road from the country's equivalent of the US military academy at West Point, New York, in a town swarming with military and intelligence personnel.

"People have been referring to this as hiding in plain sight," Obama's counterterrorism chief John Brennan told reporters Monday. "Clearly, this was something that was considered as a possibility. Pakistan is a large country. We are looking right now at how he was able to hold out there for so long and whether or not there was any type of support system within Pakistan that allowed him to stay there."

Others were more blunt.