Bin Laden unarmed

The White House said Tuesday that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was unarmed when US commandos stormed a compound near the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, and shot and killed him late Sunday.

Officials had previously said the Navy SEALs were willing to take bin Laden alive if he surrendered, but instead they encountered resistance. Spokesman Jay Carney said it was a "highly volatile firefight."

"We were prepared to capture him if that was possible," Carney said. "We expected a great deal of resistance. We were met with a great deal of resistance. There were many other people who were armed in the compound."

Bin Laden was shot in the head during the raid in Abbottabad, some 50 kilometers from the capital. Media reports said the bullet wound was above his left eye.

Questioning the killing

But confirmation the terrorist leader was unarmed is likely to stoke further debate over the US operation to net him. Some public figures in Europe have already begun questioning his killing. Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt told public television the incident was "clearly a violation of international law."

Ehrhart Körting, interior minister of the city-state of Berlin, said bin Laden should have been put on trial at the International Criminal Court. And Chancellor Angela Merkel is facing criticism at home from Christian groups and from politicians over her public expression of "pleasure" that the US succeeded in killing bin Laden.

Irwin Collier, however, an economics professor at the Free University of Berlin, told Deutsche Welle that the majority of Germans would accept the killing of bin Laden. "I think there's enough sophistication for the fact that we live in a world where there are suicide bombings," he said. "Even if Osama bin Laden were unarmed, one wouldn't know that until after the fact."

That came as US officials said they kept their Pakistani counterparts in the dark over the operation due to fears that details of the raid would be leaked.

CIA director Leon Panetta told Time magazine the US decided that informing the Pakistanis "could jeopardize the mission."

Potentially inflammatory photos

US authorities also released new details about the 40-minute raid amid pressure to prove bin Laden was in fact dead. They said one of the terrorist leader's wives tried to rush the special forces troops and was shot in the leg during the raid but not killed, contrary to comments by a White House official on Monday.

It was also confirmed that high temperatures caused one of the commandos' helicopters to make a hard landing during the operation.

Officials said they were still considering whether to release photographic evidence of his death, but added the images "could be inflammatory."

"It's fair to say that it's a gruesome photograph," Carney said.

According to Carney, there was an internal discussion underway about the most appropriate way to handle the images, but that "there is not some roiling debate here about this."

"I'll be candid. There are sensitivities here in terms of the appropriateness of releasing photographs of Osama bin Laden," he said.

Author: Darren Mara (AFP, Reuters)
Editor: Rob Turner