ALARAB Online
After killing bin Laden, US questions Pakistan
The United States warned Monday it would probe Osama bin Laden's support network in Pakistan, raising tough questions for its anti-terror ally after killing the Al-Qaeda kingpin in a daring raid.
Officials said DNA tests had proven conclusively that the man US special forces killed Sunday in the city of Abbottabad was indeed their reviled foe blamed for the deaths of 3,000 people in the September 11 attacks in 2001.
They also revealed bin Laden was buried at sea after Islamic rites on the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier, as many world leaders welcomed bin Laden's demise but warned it did not mean the challenge from terror was over.
Washington wanted to prevent any dry land grave site becoming a shrine for a man whose supporters now view as a martyr.
President Barack Obama's top anti-terror adviser John Brennan said that it was "inconceivable" that bin Laden did not have a support network in Pakistan.
"I am not going to speculate about what type of support he might have had on an official basis inside of Pakistan," said Brennan, when quizzed by reporters on oft reported links between Pakistani intelligence and radical Islamists.
"But we are closely talking to the Pakistanis right now.
"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."
US officials are puzzled by the comfortable surroundings of the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden lived, and the fact that his presence in a fortified building did not attract suspicion of Pakistani authorities.
In another sign of mistrust between Washington and Islamabad, Brennan said that US officials did not notify Pakistan of the raid until its helicopters exited Pakistani airspace with bin Laden's remains.
Brennan also said that a woman, believed to be one of bin Laden's wives, was killed in the exchange of fire with US Navy SEALS, apparently after she was used as a human shield. Two other men and a son of bin Laden also died in the action.
All of the US special forces survived the firefight.
A day after announcing the success of the military operation in a dramatic televised address, Obama spoke for a second time on the killing, saying the "world is safer, it is a better place."
DNA tests confirmed the body was that of bin Laden, a senior US official said.
"Bin Laden's DNA has been matched to several family members. And there is at least 99 percent certainty that the DNA matches that of Osama bin Laden," an official said.
World leaders welcomed the news but warned that Al-Qaeda's willingness to wreak havoc was undimmed and that the reprisal attacks were likely.
Pakistan's main Taliban faction threatened to attack Pakistan and the US, calling them "the enemies of Islam."
"If he (bin Laden) has become a martyr, it is a great victory for us because martyrdom is the aim of all of us," spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by phone.
An Internet outlet for official Al-Qaeda messages accepted its leader's killing and eulogized him as a "knight" who sacrificed his soul and money to fight the United States, the US-based monitoring group SITE said.
Hundreds took to the streets in Pakistan's city of Quetta in the country's first rally to honor bin Laden, burning a US flag and chanting anti-American slogans.
Elite troops from the US Navy SEALs carried out the assault, which lasted less than 40 minutes, killing bin Laden with a bullet to the head, another US official said.
Footage aired by the US network ABC inside the house showed blood on the floor in one room and broken computers in another, stripped of their hard drives.
Explosions, helicopters clattering overhead and gunfire tore locals from their sleep as they rushed to see what was going on, residents said.
Ejaz Mahmood, an Abbottabad tailor, said he heard a blast in the early hours and "saw a fireball coming down from the air".
One helicopter in the raid went down due to "mechanical failure" but was blown up by its crew, who left the compound along with the assault force on another chopper, a US official said.
"It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time, I think, in the lives of the people who were assembled here yesterday," Brennan told reporters.
"The minutes passed like days, and the president was very concerned about the security of our personnel."
The White House later released a photo of Obama and his security team watching the operation, apparently on a screen that is out of view in the White House Situation Room.
Obama is seen sitting to one side, staring intently at the screen. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has a hand over her mouth, while other officials look on with deep concern etched on their faces.
Residents in Abbottabad were stunned when they switched on their TV sets after daybreak to hear Obama announce that bin Laden had been killed in their home town, which was soon engulfed by a heavy Pakistani security presence.
"We heard ambulance sirens and security people shouting. We saw fire and flames coming out," according to another resident who was too frightened to give his name.
Until now, bin Laden had always managed to evade US forces, despite a $25 million bounty, and was most often thought to be hiding on the Afghan-Pakistani border.
His presence in Abbottabad -- a leafy town that is home to an elite Pakistani military academy -- will heighten doubts about the Islamabad government's zeal for prosecuting the war on terror.
Clinton said "cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound in which he was hiding," but Brennan's more detailed comments revealed the independence of the US operation.
Asked in an interview about the extent of Pakistani cooperation, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said: "I don't know the details, I don't know minute details, but in short we have intelligence cooperation."
He described bin Laden's death as a "great victory."
But leaders in both Afghanistan and India said bin Laden's discovery so close to Islamabad vindicated their claims of double-dealing by their nuclear-armed neighbor.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon described the killing of bin Laden as a "watershed moment" in the global fight against terrorism.
But the US State Department warned of the potential for reprisals against Americans and CIA director Leon Panetta saying that terrorist groups "almost certainly" would try to avenge bin Laden.
Iran meanwhile said bin Laden's death had removed "any excuse" for the US and its allies to deploy forces in the Middle East under the pretext of fighting terrorism.
-Agencies-
http://www.alarabonline.org/english/display.asp?fname=\2011\05\05-03\zsubz\910.htm&dismode=x&ts=3-5-2011%2011:07:56
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