Al-Qaeda founder and leader Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US forces, President Barack Obama has said. The al-Qaeda leader was killed in a ground operation based on US intelligence, the first lead of which emerged last August.
Mr Obama said after "a firefight" US forces took possession of his body.
Bin Laden was accused of being behind a number of atrocities, including the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001.
He was top of the US "most wanted" list.
Crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington DC, chanting "USA, USA" after the news emerged.
Bin Laden approved the 9/11 attacks in which nearly 3,000 people died, saying later that the results had exceeded his expectations.
He evaded the forces of the US and its allies for almost a decade, despite a $25m bounty on his head.
His death will be seen as a major blow to al-Qaeda but also raise fears of reprisal attacks, correspondents say.
Officials long believed bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world, was hiding a mountainous region along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak ahead of the president's statement.
The development comes just months before the tenth anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, orchestrated by bin Laden's al-Qaida organization. The attacks killed more than 3,000 people.
The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and America's entire intelligence apparatus was overhauled to counter the threat of more terror attacks at home.
Al-Qaida organization was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.
source: BBC news/TOI.
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