President Obama: "A good day for America"
Proudly declaring the killing of Osama bin Laden "a good day for America," President Barack Obama said Monday the world was a safer place without the world's most hunted terrorist.
Section:Picture story
Osama bin Laden, the elusive terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclosed Monday. The U.S. said a DNA match proved his identity, and millions of Americans rejoiced.
Associated Press
This June 15, 2005 satellite image provided by DigitalGlobe shows the compound, lower right, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden lived.
DigitalGlobe Associated Press
Three U.S. officials say American forces were led to Osama bin Laden by his most trusted courier, a Kuwaiti-born man named Sheikh Abu Ahmed. Ahmed was a shadowy figure for U.S. intelligence, someone it took many years to identify. For a long time, intelligence officials knew him only by his nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. The first indications about his significance came from CIA detainees shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Ahmed and his brother were killed in the same predawn raid Monday that left bin Laden dead.
Associated Press
A Pakistan army soldier stands on top of the house where it is believed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Anjum Naveed Associated Press
Obama signed an order on Friday for a team of SEALs to chopper onto the compound under the cover of darkness. In the ensuing 48 hours, the president toured tornado-damaged Alabama and delivered a joke-filled after-dinner speech to the White House Correspondents Association. When the operation got under way, though, he slid into his chair in the Situation Room in the White House, where Brennan said the president and his aides "were able to monitor in a real-time basis the progress of the operation" from beginning to end. Brennan strongly suggested a live video feed was available.
Associated Press
In this image released by the White House and digitally altered by the source to diffuse the paper in front of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, along with with members of the national security team, receive an update on the mission against Osama bin Laden in the Situation Room of the White House, Sunday, May 1, 2011, in Washington.
The White House, Pete Souza Associated Press
A photo taken by a local resident, shows the wreckage of a helicopter next to the wall of the compound where according to officials, Osama bin Laden was shot and killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Mohammad Zubair Associated Press
Being removed from the scene, a truck carries what is thought to be parts of the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed next to the wall of a compound where according to officials, Osama bin Laden was shot and killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Aqeel Ahmed Associated Press
Pakistan army soldiers stand guard near the compound where it is believed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Anjum Naveed Associated Press
After the gunfire, U.S. forces swept bin Laden's fortified compound in Pakistan and left with a trove of hard drives, DVDs and other documents that officials said the CIA was already poring over. The hope: clues leading to his presumed successor, al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Associated Press
In this file television image from Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera, Osama bin Laden, right, listens as his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri speaks at an undisclosed location, in this image made from undated video tape broadcast by the station Monday April 15, 2002.
Al-Jazeera/APTN, File Associated Press
This frame grab from video obtained exclusively by ABC News, on Monday, May 2, 2011, shows a section of the compound where it is believed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
ABC News Associated Press
This frame grab from video obtained exclusively by ABC News, on Monday, May 2, 2011, shows a section of a room in the interior of the compound where it is believed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden lived in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
ABC News Associated Press
Pakistan's foreign office is hailing Osama bin Laden's death, but some in the country are reacting angrily. There has been no sign of a major backlash, but at least one Islamist political party did stage a protest in the southwestern city of Quetta. More than 100 party members shouted, "Down with America! Down with Obama!"
Associated Press
Angry supporters of Pakistani religious party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam burn representation of the United States during a rally to condemn the killing of Osama bin Laden in Quetta, Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Arshad Butt Associated Press
Halfway around the world, a prominent al-Qaida commentator vowed revenge for bin Laden's death. "Woe to his enemies. By God, we will avenge the killing of the Sheik of Islam," he wrote under his online name Assad al-Jihad2. "Those who wish that jihad has ended or weakened, I tell them: Let us wait a little bit."
Associated Press
Supporters of Pakistani religious party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam rally to condemn killing of Osama bin Laden in Quetta, Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Arshad Butt Associated Press
In Afghanistan, where bin Laden was given refuge by the country's previous Taliban rulers, local officials erupted in applause when President Hamid Karzai told them the news. "(His hands) were dipped in the blood of thousands and thousands of children, youths and elders of Afghanistan," Karzai told reporters, and repeated his claim that that the fight against terrorism should not be fought in Afghan villages, but across the border in hideouts in Pakistan where bin Laden was killed.
Associated Press
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, center, flanked by Vice Presidents Mohammed Qasim Fahim, center left, and Karim Khalili, center right, addresses the media at the Presidential Palace in Kabul Monday, May 2, 2011. Karzai lauded Osama bin Laden’s death as a serious blow to terrorism Monday and argued that the strike in Pakistan proves the real fight against terrorists is outside his country’s borders.
Shah Marai, Pool Associated Press
Afghan men gathered to watch television coverage announcing the killing of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden a few minutes before the start of news service on a local TV channel at a local restaurant in Kabul, Afghanistan Monday, May 2, 2011.
Musadeq Sadeq Associated Press
Anti-government protestors watch a TV broadcasting President Barack Obama statement on the death of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, in a tent at the site of a demonstration demanding the resignation of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in Sanaa,Yemen, Monday, May 2, 2011.
Muhammed Muheisen Associated Press
Americans awoke on Monday to a world without Osama bin Laden, and many felt jubilation, a surge of patriotism and a sense that their prayers had been answered and that the U.S. had finally avenged the nearly 3,000 people killed nearly a decade ago on Sept. 11, 2001. But to many — including some of the same Americans glad to see bin Laden dead — the news didn't make them feel safer. It led to uncertainty and fear.
Associated Press
Jeff Ray, right, and Jan Ray of Shanksville, Pa., attach a sign to the fence overlooking the crash site of United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pa., Monday, May 2, 2011.
Gene J. Puskar Associated Press
Los Angeles Sheriff’s Bomb K-9 Threat Interdiction Unit handler, Kiley Hayden and his dog “XXZYLO”’ sniffs a subway train at Los Angeles Union Station, Monday, May 2, 2011. Hours after the announcement that terrorist Osama bin Laden had been killed in a firefight near Pakistan’s capital, security was heightened in many areas that could be considered potential targets for terrorist attacks.
Damian Dovarganes Associated Press
Michael McKee pauses Monday, May 2, 2011, in Middletown, N.J., as he sits among some of the 37 carved stone memorials in a garden that honors those from the town that died in the attacks on the World Trade Center Sept. 11, 2001.
Mel Evans Associated Press
Tara Bane-DellaCorte, whose husband Michael A. Bane died in the attacks on the World Trade Center, visits the Garden of Reflection memorial to local victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, with her son Cole, 20 months, in Yardley, Pa. on Monday, May 2, 2011.
Matt Rourke Associated Press