Relations between US and Pakistan strained

Supporters of a hardline pro-Taliban party shout anti-US slogans in Quetta, Pakistan The United States warned it would probe how Osama bin Laden managed to live in undetected luxury in Pakistan, as gripping details emerged about the US commando raid that killed the Al-Qaeda kingpin. Officials said DNA tests

had proven conclusively that the man shot dead by US special forces in Abbottabad was indeed the Islamist terror mastermind who boasted about the deaths of 3,000 people in the September 11 attacks of 2001.

Pakistan's president has dismissed as "baseless" accusations that his nation extends safe haven to extremists and insisted its long-term help was crucial to the US success in gunning down Osama bin Laden. Asif Ali Zardari's defence came after Washington warned it would probe how the Al-Qaeda chief came  to live in undetected luxury in Pakistan, as gripping new details emerged about the US commando raid that killed him. Pakistan's foreign affairs ministry has categorically denied that Pakistan had any prior knowledge of the raid on Bin Laden's compound. in a statement it said: "The government of Pakistan expresses its deep concerns and reservations on the manner in which the government of the United States carried out this operation without prior information or authorization from the government of Pakistan.But it insisted that the ISI had been sharing intelligence with the CIA about the compound since 2003.

On members of Bin Laden's family injured in the raid, the ministry's statement said: "They are all in safe hands and being looked after in accordance with law. Some of them needing medical care are under treatment in the best possible facilities. As per policy, they will be handed over to their countries of origin."

"We got him," US President Barack Obama told his top lieutenants, who had gathered in the White House Situation Room to watch the dramatic operation unfold late Sunday, according to the New York Times.
The high tension gripping the room had finally been broken by confirmation relayed by CIA chief Leon Panetta that the status of bin Laden -- codenamed "Geronimo" -- was now "EKIA": Enemy Killed in Action.

Still-secret photos of the dead Osama bin Laden show a precision kill shot above his left eye, a US official said, as fresh details emerged of the audacious American raid that netted potentially crucial al Qaeda records as well as the body of the global terrorist leader.  According to the US account, the assault team came away with hard drives, DVDs, documents and more that might tip US intelligence to al Qaeda’s operational details and perhaps lead the manhunt to the presumed next-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri. The CIA is already going over the material. US officials say the photographic evidence shows bin Laden was shot above his left eye, blowing away part of his skull.
He was also shot in the chest, they said.. This, near the end of a frenzied firefight in a high-walled Pakistani compound where helicopter-borne US forces found 23 children, nine women, a bin Laden courier who had unwittingly led the US to its target, a son of bin Laden who was also slain, and more.

Bin Laden had lived at the fortified compound for six years, officials said, putting him far from the lawless and harsh Pakistani frontier where he had been assumed to be hiding out. The only information about what occurred inside the compound has come from American officials, much of it provided under condition of anonymity. They said SEALs dropped down ropes from helicopters, killed bin Laden aides and made their way to the main building. Obama and his national security team monitored the strike, watching and listening nervously and in near silence from the Situation Room as it all unfolded.

“The minutes passed like days,” White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said. US officials said the information that ultimately led to bin Laden’s capture originally came from detainees held in secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe. There, agency interrogators were told of an alias used by a courier whom bin Laden particularly trusted.

In addition to bin Laden, one of his sons, Khalid, was killed in the raid, Brennan said. Bin Laden’s wife was shot in the calf but survived, a US official said. Also killed were the courier, another al Qaeda facilitator and an unidentified woman, officials said. Some people found at the compound were left behind when the SEALs withdrew and were turned over to Pakistani authorities who quickly took over control of the site, officials said. They identified the trusted courier as Kuwaiti-born Sheikh Abu Ahmed, who had been known under the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

Within 40 minutes, the operation was over, and the SEALs flew out — minus one helicopter, which had malfunctioned and had to be destroyed. Bin Laden’s remains were flown to the USS Carl Vinson, then lowered into the North Arabian Sea. Bin Laden’s death came 15 years after he declared war on the United States. Al Qaeda was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in Africa that killed 224 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled..

His death at the hands of helicopter-borne US Navy SEAL commandos was the climax of years of painstaking intelligence work that followed bin Laden from the mountains of Afghanistan to a palatial villa in a Pakistani garrison town. Obama's top anti-terror adviser John Brennan said it was "inconceivable" that bin Laden did not enjoy a support network in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation allied uneasily to the US-led war in neighboring Afghanistan.
After Sunday night's public celebrations in New York and Washington, the mood among some US lawmakers turned angry amid demands to know how bin Laden lived undisturbed in a country that receives billions of dollars of US aid.

Leafy Abbottabad is home to the Pakistani equivalent of the West Point and Sandhurst military academies, is popular with retired military personnel and tourists alike, and lies just two hours' drive north of Islamabad. The commando operation, which officials said lasted less than 40 minutes, stormed a heavily fortified compound that stood out from other properties for its towering perimeter walls and smothering security. But in a country where anti-US feeling runs strong and where conspiracy theories proliferate, not everyone was buying the US version of events."Nobody believes it. We've never seen any Arabs around here," said Bashir Qureshi, 61, who lives a stone's throw from where bin Laden was shot and whose windows were blown out in the raid."They (the US) said they had thrown his body to the sea! This is wrong, he was not here."US officials said bin Laden was buried at sea after Islamic rites on the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, as many world leaders welcomed his demise but warned it did not mean the challenge from terror was over.

The Shumukh al-Islam forum, the online conduit for Al-Qaeda missives, issued a statement Tuesday decrying the world media for uncritically accepting the US announcement that bin Laden was dead, the SITE Monitoring Service reported.But the statement did not contradict the reports or say outright that he may still be alive, according to a SITE translation.

With Pakistan's main Taliban faction vowing vengeance, the United States said Tuesday it was closing its consulates in Lahore and Peshawar to the public until further notice.The US State Department warned of the potential for reprisals against Americans, while the CIA's Panetta said terrorist groups "almost certainly" would try to avenge bin Laden.Leaders in both Afghanistan and India said bin Laden's discovery so close to Islamabad vindicated their claims of double-dealing by Pakistan's military and intelligence powerbrokers.

Writing in Tuesday's Washington Post, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari defended his country against accusations it did not do enough to track down bin Laden, but made no direct comment on alleged intelligence failures.
"Although the events of Sunday were not a joint operation, a decade of cooperation and partnership between the United States and Pakistan led up to the elimination of Osama bin Laden as a continuing threat to the civilized world," Zardari wrote in an opinion piece. "We in Pakistan take some satisfaction that our early assistance in identifying an Al-Qaeda courier ultimately led to this day," he said, without explaining how bin Laden came to live undetected in Abbottabad."He was not anywhere we had anticipated he would be, but now he is gone."

In another sign of mistrust between Washington and Islamabad, Brennan said US officials did not notify Pakistan of the raid until its helicopters exited Pakistani airspace with bin Laden's remains.Hundreds late Monday took to the streets in Quetta, a city believed to be home to the Afghanistan Taliban's ruling council, in Pakistan's first rally to honor bin Laden, burning a US flag and chanting anti-US slogans.