Details are emerging of how al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was found and killed at a fortified compound on the outskirts of Abbottabad in north-west Pakistan.
The compound is just “a stone’s throw” and less than 200 yards from the Pakistan Military Academy, an elite military training centre, which is Pakistan’s equivalent to Britain’s Sandhurst, one local journalist from Abbottabad told the BBC.
Other reports have put the distance at 800 yards.
But the compound lies well within Abbottabad’s military cantonment – it is likely the area would have had a constant and significant military presence and checkpoints.
The operation began at about 2230 (1730 GMT) and lasted about 45 minutes, military sources told BBC Urdu. Two or three helicopters were seen flying low over the area. Witnesses say it caused panic among local residents.
Barbed wire and cameras The target of the operation was the compound, which had at its centre a large three-storey building.
When the helicopters landed outside, men emerged from the aircraft and spoke to locals in Pashto, witnesses told BBC Urdu.
People living in the area, known as Thanda Choha, were told to switch off their lights and not to leave their homes.
Shortly afterwards residents said they heard shots being fired and the sound of heavy firearms.
At some point in the operation one of the helicopters crashed, either from technical failure or having been hit by gunfire from the ground.
The compound was about 3,000 sq yards in size but people from the area told the BBC that it was surrounded by 14ft-high walls, so not much could be seen of what was happening inside.
The walls were topped by barbed wire and contained cameras.
There were two security gates at the house and no phone or internet lines running into the compound, the Associated Press (AP) reports.
‘Waziristan Mansion’
After the operation witnesses said all they could see was flames snaking up from inside the house.
The forces conducting the operation later emerged from the compound, possibly with somebody who had been inside, local residents told the BBC.
They said that women and children were also living in the compound.
One local resident told the BBC Urdu service that the house was built by a Pashtun man about 10 or 12 years ago and he said that none of the locals were aware of who was really living there
According to one local journalist, the house was known in the area as Waziristani Haveli – or Waziristan Mansion.
The journalist said it was owned by people from Waziristan, the mountainous and inhospitable semi-autonomous tribal area close to the Afghan border, which until now most observers believed to be the hiding place for bin Laden.
This house was in a residential district of Abbottabad’s suburbs called Bilal Town and known to be home to a number of retired military officers from the area.
Intelligence officials in the US are quoted by AP as saying that the house was custom-built to harbour a major “terrorist” figure.
It says CIA experts analysed whether it could be anyone else but they decided it was almost certainly Bin Laden.
Pakistani troops arrived at the scene after the attack and took over the area.
BBC correspondents say US troops were probably operating out of a base used by US Marines in Tarbela Ghazi, an area close to Abbottabad.
By, Arraale M. Jama Freelance Journalist and Human Rights Activist
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