US President Barack Obama watched the real action unfold live on a TV screen as a US commando gunned down Al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Abbottabad in Pakistan early Monday. He broke the news to the world later that the US Navy Seals had taken the world’s deadliest terrorist.
Via a video camera fixed to the helmet of a US Navy Seal, President Obama saw Osama being shot in the left eye, the Daily Mail reported. The Seal then carried out what is known in the military as a ‘double tap’ – shooting Osama again, probably in the chest, to make certain he was dead.
The photos issued by the White House late Monday night show Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in similar poses, their hands clamped over their mouths, sitting around a table and watching the TV screen.
The two leaders watched it all with the president’s national security team, as a crew of Navy Seals stormed the terror chief’s hideout in Pakistan.
In the pictures, while the assembled presidential men in the room, arms folded, remain largely expressionless as they stare at the live feed streamed from the helmet camera of a US commando, it is the expression on Clinton’s face that clearly shows the tension that they all felt.
Obama, with his eyes intently focused on the scene unfolding and with his fist clenched to his mouth, was said to be ’stony faced’ through the transmission, even at the point when a voice came over the speakers stating: ‘We’ve ID’d Geronimo’ – a code name for bin Laden, the Daily Mail report added.
As Osama was shot, Obama was said to have turned to the colleagues and said: “We got him.”
With the mission accomplished, those present were able to breathe a sigh of relief.
The footage of the battle in bin Laden’s Pakistani hideout is said to show one of his wives acting as a human shield to protect him as he blasted away with an AK47 assault rifle.
She died, along with three other men, including one of bin Laden’s sons. Within hours, the Al Qaeda leader’s body was buried at sea.
With Obama and Clinton as the tense operation unfolded were Vice President Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and White House Chief-of-Staff Bill Daly.
The president was also seen on the phone later talking to the heads of allied countries, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.
