International terrorist Osama Bin Laden was killed in a U.S. military operation in Pakistan on Sunday.
Four others were killed in the operation, including a woman used by Bin Laden as a human shield. No U.S. personnel were hurt in the operation.
Bin Laden was the mastermind of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York City, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania.
“The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory – hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky; the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground; black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon; the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction. And yet we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world. The empty seat at the dinner table. Children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father. Parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts,” President Barack Obama said in an address to the nation late Sunday night.
Obama told the nation that he was briefed in August 2010 on a possible lead to Bin Laden’s whereabouts. The president and his national-security team worked on a plan of action over the course of the next several months that finally came to a head last week with authorization from Obama on the operation that was undertaken on Sunday.
The death of Bin Laden “marks the most significant achievement to date” in the nearly 10-year effort to defeat Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist organization, Obama said, but “his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt,” the president said, “that Al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must – and we will – remain vigilant at home and abroad.”
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