LA Times News

LA Times News

Europeans say they are relieved but wary after Bin Laden's death

Posted: 02 May 2011 08:00 PM PDT

Even as European leaders congratulate President Obama, they are warning their citizens to remain on watch for any suspicious activity. 'There'll be retaliations,' one Briton says.

The man who inspired deadly attacks on their soil is gone. Much of the fear he inspired is not.

Osama bin Laden's burial at sea upsets relatives of Sept. 11 victims

Posted: 02 May 2011 05:26 PM PDT

In New York, two mothers and a sister of Sept. 11 victims say the U.S. was too hasty in burying Bin Laden at sea. They say Americans deserved to see the body.

Rosaleen Tallon kissed her three children good night and went to sleep feeling at peace. The terrorist responsible for the death of her brother, New York firefighter Sean Patrick Tallon, was dead. Her two boys and her little girl had been assured that the "bad man" behind the attacks that claimed their uncle was gone.

For friends and family of fallen troops, celebration and reassessment at news of Bin Laden's death

Posted: 02 May 2011 08:00 PM PDT

The announcement that U.S. special forces had killed Bin Laden was cause for jubilation. It was also an opportunity to reassess sacrifices, to wrest a historic and tangible result, at long last, from a murky war.

Margot Stengel went to bed Sunday on the early side, with a heavy heart, as she had ever since her son died during his tour in Afghanistan. She was surprised when the phone rang a little before 10, and even more surprised to hear the voice of her grandson.

Bin Laden's sea burial fuels conspiracy theories

Posted: 02 May 2011 06:40 PM PDT

The U.S. faces a quandary in proving the Al Qaeda's leader death without inflaming his supporters, and may release photos of his body. Skeptics include the mother of a Sept. 11 victim.

Within hours of the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistani compound, the CIA had used 21st century technology to get "a virtually 100% DNA match" on the dead man. But something out of another century may come back to haunt Washington: the Al Qaeda leader's burial at sea.

Osama bin Laden's appeal had waned in Arab world

Posted: 02 May 2011 04:43 PM PDT

In the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, Arabs have found new ways to change their circumstances without waging a 'holy war.'

The austere image of a tall, turbaned man battling the West from a cave inspired young Islamist warriors for years. But when Osama bin Laden died, his virulent brand of jihad had been all but extinguished by the "Arab Spring" that found more potent and peaceful ways to reshape the world.

Abbottabad residents startled by events

Posted: 02 May 2011 02:58 PM PDT

They say they had no idea that the fortress-like compound in a quiet neighborhood housed Osama bin Laden, the most wanted man in the world.

Perhaps nothing was as surprising in the hunt for Osama bin Laden as the last place he chose to hide.

40 minutes to capture or kill: Timeline, history of Osama bin Laden raid

Posted: 02 May 2011 01:01 PM PDT

The dramatic events early Monday, with a firefight that ended in Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan, were preceded by years of intelligence gathering and extensive, painstaking planning.

After landing by helicopter at the Pakistani compound housing Osama bin Laden early Monday, local time, the U.S. special operations team tasked with capturing or killing the Al Qaeda leader found itself in an almost continuous gun battle.

Iran disparages news of Osama bin Laden's death

Posted: 02 May 2011 11:52 AM PDT

Iranian officials and state media, reacting to reports that U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden, alternately label the news a lie, call it a cynical move to prop up President Obama, and cite it as a reason why the U.S. should now pull its troops out of the region.

Osama bin Laden was a Sunni Muslim extremist who considered Iran's Shiite majority faith a blasphemous deviation from the Koran. His ideological fellow travelers killed members of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guard in eastern Iran and slaughtered Shiites in Iraq.

Afghans fear Bin Laden's death won't end war

Posted: 02 May 2011 06:50 PM PDT

Reactions are varied in Afghanistan, but many say Osama bin Laden's death won't affect insurgent operations in the nation. A Taliban field commander in southern Afghanistan says, 'Why would this make us stop?'

The Taliban's war was not Osama bin Laden's war.

Hamas denounces killing of Bin Laden

Posted: 02 May 2011 05:11 AM PDT

The prime minister of the Gaza Strip government calls the Al Qaeda terrorist leader a "holy warrior."

Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, on Monday denounced the U.S. killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.

Pakistani TV station broadcasts footage of fire said to be at Bin Laden compound [VIDEO]

Posted: 02 May 2011 01:57 AM PDT

A Pakistani TV station broadcast footage of a fire said to be at the compound near Islamabad where Osama bin Laden was killed Sunday.

Osama bin Laden's death is 'important day,' Karzai says

Posted: 02 May 2011 03:05 AM PDT

Afghanistan's president says the Taliban should learn from Bin Laden's fate.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Monday that the death of Osama bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan proved that "the fight against terrorism is not in Afghanistan."

Osama bin Laden, born to privilege, dies a pariah

Posted: 02 May 2011 12:26 AM PDT

He used his great wealth to fund a terrorist campaign fueled by a puritanical vision of Islam and a hatred for the West.

Osama bin Laden, a scion of one of Saudi Arabia's wealthiest families, became the grim apostle of a strain of Islamic radicalism that exalted violence against non-believers, and the leader of a terrorist network that launched repeated attacks in the West, most spectacularly in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

U.S. kills Osama bin Laden

Posted: 02 May 2011 12:19 AM PDT

Al Qaeda leader dies in a firefight near Pakistan capital. 'Justice has been done,' President Obama says.

A U.S. special forces team killed Osama bin Laden at a compound inside Pakistan and recovered his body, bringing a close to the world's highest-profile manhunt after a decade-long search, President Obama announced to the world Sunday night.

Suspicions grow over whether Pakistan aided Osama bin Laden

Posted: 02 May 2011 12:23 AM PDT

The fact that the Al Qaeda leader was caught in the heart of the nation may add to the questions in Washington over how much Pakistan's security forces knew about his whereabouts.

The fact that Osama bin Laden was killed not in the tribal badlands of northwestern Pakistan but in a small city just north of the capital is likely to raise new suspicions in Washington about how much the country's security establishment knew of his whereabouts — and whether elements of it assisted him.

Two bombings rock Afghanistan

Posted: 01 May 2011 04:47 PM PDT

More than half a dozen people are killed and 20 injured in the attacks in Paktika and Ghazni provinces. The Taliban denies responsibility.

On the first day of the Taliban's self-declared spring offensive, insurgents attacked in two Afghan provinces, killing more than half a dozen people, including a district council leader, and wounding another 20, officials said.

Spy flap weakens Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Posted: 01 May 2011 09:30 PM PDT

Surveillance of the president's closest aide sets off events that humiliate Ahmadinejad after the nation's supreme leader reverses the president's decision to fire the minister of intelligence.

Electronic surveillance of officials at the highest levels of political power lies at the heart of a rift between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a source close to Tehran's conservative leadership told The Times.