The world's most wanted man, Osama bin Laden, was killed in an operation led by the United States at Abbottabad in Pakistan on Sunday night.
A small team of Americans carried out the attack and took custody of the al-Queda leader's remains. His body was later buried in the sea.
The most intense manhunt in history ended with the death of Osama whose money and rageful preaching inspired the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, and ripped a hole in America's sense of security in the world.
Reviled in the West as the personification of evil, bin Laden was admired and even revered by some radical Muslims who embraced his vision of unending jihad against the United States and Arab governments he deemed as infidels.
Born into one of Saudi Arabia's most prosperous families, Osama left home in search of revolution, found a path of fanaticism, inspired a murderous organization that terrorized the West, and ultimately became the most wanted man in the world.
'America can't get me alive,' bin Laden had been quoted as saying in an interview with a Pakistani journalist conducted shortly after the US invasion of Afghanistan. And while his bluster proved prophetic, in the end it was not bin Laden who would get the last word.
'On nights like this one,' US President Barack Obama said in announcing bin Laden's death to the world, 'we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror: Justice has been done.'
Text: Sify News Desk
(Photographs copyright AP and PTI)
