Slain al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea following his death in a US-led military operation in Pakistan, a US official told newswire AFP Monday.
Senior administration officials said the body would be handled according to Islamic practice and tradition, the newswire said. That practice calls for the body to be buried within 24 hours.
Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world’s most wanted terrorist would have been difficult, the official said. So the US decided to bury him at sea.
The official, who spoke Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive national security matters, did not immediately say where that occurred.
Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan on Sunday in a firefight with a team of US operatives who raided the compound where he had been hiding, President Barack Obama said in a dramatic address from the White House.
“On nights like this one we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to Al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done,” Obama said in a late-night televised speech.
The news was met by scenes of jubilation as crowds gathered in Times Square and outside the White House to celebrate.
Obama delivered the news to the nation almost 10 years after the September 11 attacks, orchestrated by bin Laden, that killed almost 3,000 people at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in suburban Washington and a field in Pennsylvania where hijacked United Flight 93 crashed.
Bin Laden had eluded US forces that had invaded Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks on the US, escaping across the mountainous border with Pakistan. After years of “painstaking” work, US intelligence last August picked up his trail in Pakistan, Obama said, and after months of investigation he was tracked to a compound in a city north of Islamabad.
“Finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorised an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice,” Obama said.
The president gave the go ahead for the operation early in the morning of April 29, according to one of the officials.
Officials described a helicopter raid on the compound using what they said was a small team and designed to minimise risk to non-combatants in the compound. At least two helicopters were used; one had mechanical problems.
The operation at the compound lasted less than 40 minutes. Three other adult males were killed in addition to bin Laden, officials said. One woman was killed when she was used as a human shield by a male combatant, the officials said.
For the full story of the military operation that killed Osama bin Laden, click here
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