WASHINGTON—(UPDATE) Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead, and President Barack Obama will announce his death, nearly 10 years after the September 11 attacks in a televised address, a senior US official told AFP.
The official said on condition of anonymity that Bin Laden was dead, but did not provide details of how his death occurred.
CNN quoted sources as saying that Bin Laden was killed in an operation based on actionable US intelligence targeting a mansion outside the Pakistani capital Islamabad.
Obama was imminently to address Americans in a highly unusual Sunday night appearance on television.
US armed forces have been hunting the Saudi terror kingpin for years, an effort that was redoubled following the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon which killed 3,000 people in 2001.
But Bin Laden always managed to evade US armed forces and a massive manhunt, and was most often thought to be hiding out in Pakistan and Afghanistan border areas.
The death of Bin Laden will raise huge questions about the future shape of Al-Qaeda and also have steep implications for US security and foreign policy 10 years into a global anti-terror campaign.
It will also raise fears that the United States and its allies will face retaliation from supporters of bin Laden and other Islamic extremist groups.
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