Conflict2 May 2011

Killing of Osama bin Laden

Also called: Operation Neptune Spear

Early on 2 May 2011 US Navy SEALs flown in by helicopter from Afghanistan killed Osama bin Laden in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

President Obama and his advisers follow the raid in the White House Situation Room, 1 May 2011 (Washington time)
Pete Souza · Public domain · Source

Over several years the CIA traced one of bin Laden’s couriers to a walled house in Abbottabad, not far from Pakistan’s military academy. Though no one could be certain, President Barack Obama approved a raid.

In the early hours of 2 May 2011 Navy SEALs crossed the border from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in two Black Hawk helicopters. One crashed while landing in the compound, but the raid was over in forty minutes; bin Laden was shot on the third floor of the house. In the White House Situation Room the president and his advisers followed the operation. It was almost ten years after the September 11 attacks.

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States and rulers at the time: United States — President Barack Obama
Pakistan
Places: Abbottabad compound

People

Barack Obama1961
commander · 44th President of the United States (2009–2017) and the first African American president, who approved the 2011 raid on Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden1957 – 2011
related figure · Saudi-born Islamist extremist who founded and led al-Qaeda from 1988 and ordered the September 11 attacks; killed by US forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in 2011

Themes that include this event

The September 11 Attacks1988 – 2014
Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the four airliners hijacked on the morning of 11 September 2001 and the fall of the twin towers, the closing of the American sky, twenty years of war in Afghanistan and the death of bin Laden, and the memorial pools in the towers’ footprints