News
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Osama’s Abbottabad house is no more
ABBOTTABAD: Bulldozers on Monday razed to the ground the infamous three-storey home in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden lived for at least five years until he was killed by US special forces May last year. Only the wall of the compound remained intact, obscuring the debris of the house in the town of Abbottabad where the al Qaeda chief hid with his three wives and nine children, 50 kilometres from the capital. “The demolition has been completed, the three-storey building was razed to the ground,” a security official told AFP. Bulldozers began the demolition work Saturday night in Abbottabad’s Bilal Town, which was propelled from a quiet suburb to international notoriety after the al Qaeda leader was killed on May 2. The debris from the flattened house was invisible from street level, hidden behind the 18-foot-high boundary wall of the compound. “We found nothing in the building. Everything had already been taken away by the investigation experts,” the security official told AFP. Hundreds of people visited after bin Laden’s killing, provoking concern that it could become a shrine to terrorists in a country where attacks blamed on the Taliban and al Qaeda have killed thousands in recent years. A provincial government official said the hideout had been destroyed because “the structure had become weak and cracks had appeared” following the US raid, posing a risk to people who continued to visit out of curiosity. He said no decision had been taken on the future of the site. Property documents show the land was owned by a man who later served as a courier for bin Laden. He is believed to have been killed during the raid. “By demolishing this compound they want to remove Osama’s name from Abbottabad history but you can’t delete history,” said Pakistani journalist and an expert on militancy, Rahimullah Yusufzai. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk