Residents of the Abbottabad were jolted from their sleep on Sunday night by the boom of explosions, unaware the hunt for the world's most wanted man was coming to a bloody end in their sleepy hills. Helicopter-borne US forces swooped on a compound on the edge of Abbottabad in the middle of the night and killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden who was hiding there, nearly a decade after he masterminded the September 11 attacks.
"We rushed to the rooftop and saw flames near that house. We also heard some gunshots," said Mohammad Idrees, who lives about 400 metres from the compound. "Soon after the blast, we saw military vehicles rushing to the site." Pakistani soldiers stopped reporters approaching the compound, which they had cordoned off with a red canvas screen.
A helicopter covered by a tarpaulin sat in a nearby field. Later, Pakistani soldiers dismantled the aircraft and took it away in pieces on trucks. US officials earlier said a US helicopter was lost due to a mechanical problem during the operation but that its crew safely evacuated. Bin Laden's three-storey residence, called a mansion by US officials, stood fourth in a row of about a dozen houses. A satellite dish could be seen in the compound, which itself was surrounded by high walls.
Television pictures from inside the house showed blood stains smeared across a floor next to a large bed. Nearby, a row of medicine was lined up on a shelf and some shirts hung in a cupboard. Another resident, Nasir Khan, said commandos had encircled the compound as three helicopters hovered overhead.
"All of a sudden there was firing towards the helicopters from the ground," said Khan, who watched the drama unfold from his roof. "There was intense firing and then I saw one of the helicopters crash." US officials in Washington said a small US team conducted a helicopter raid on the compound in Abbottabad, a military garrison town some 60 km (35 miles) north of the capital Islamabad. After 40 minutes of fighting, bin Laden and an adult son, one unidentified woman and two men were dead.