It's nice news.
Yet, it comes a little late.
From Pakistan's DAWN newspaper's account:
Residents said they were astounded to learn bin Laden had been in their midst. One neighbour said an old man had been living in the compound for the past 10 years.Link to Google Maps view of site (ht Tom Gross).
“He never mixed much, he kept a low profile,” said the neighbour, Zahoor Ahmed.
“It’s hard to believe bin Laden was there. We never saw any extraordinary movements,” said another neighbour, Adress Ahmed.
Abbottabad has long been a cool, leafy retreat from the heat of the Pakistan plains.
It was founded by a British army officer, James Abbott, in the mid-nineteenth century as the British were pushing the bounds of their Indian empire into the northwestern hills inhabited by Pashtun tribes.
Today, the town is home to a Pakistani military academy and its surrounding hills are dotted with summer homes.
Sohaib Athar, whose online profile says he is an IT consultant taking a break from the rat race, sent out a stream of live updates on Twitter about the movement of helicopters and blasts without realising it was a raid on bin Laden.
When he learnt who had been killed, he tweeted: “Uh oh, there goes the neighbourhood.”
But it might take more to convince many people that bin Laden is dead.
One soldier on patrol near the compound said there had been talk before of bin Laden’s death, only for it to be proven untrue.
“It’s not clear if he was killed or not,” the soldier said.
Amateur video of Osama Bin Laden's hideout from YouTube (ht Sohaib Athar) :
