A Pakistani IT consultant who says he was "taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops" was staying near the Abbottabad compound where Osama bin Laden was killed yesterday. As the 40 minute raid went down, he "live tweeted" about it in a series of increasingly humorous posts, Forbes reports. Around 1 a.m., Sohaib Athar, writing under the handle @ReallyVirtual, wrote, "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event),” and “Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter." But those inconsiderate Navy Seals wouldn't keep it down!
He then described hearing a "huge windows shaking bang" and soon updated, "all silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too." Now Athar has over 30,000 Twitter followers, and writes, "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it," followed by "and here come the mails from the mainstream media... *sigh*" He's reportedly been deluged with emails and interview requests, and his most recent update is simply, "Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now."
Athar was hardly the only one spreading the bin Laden news via Twitter. According to the Guardian, the news was first broken on Twitter by Keith Urbahn, a former chief of staff to Donald Rumsfeld who tweeted at 10:25 p.m. last night, "So I’m told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden. Hot damn." (Urbahn later tweeted, "Stories about the 'death of MSM [mainstream media]' because of my 'first' tweet are greatly exaggerated.")
U.S. intelligence officers had reportedly been monitoring the compound in Abbottabad, an affluent suburb about an hour drive from Islamabad, since last August, and planning for the raid accelerated in March. Bin Laden was tracked down through one of his trusted couriers, who was followed to the house, located at the end of a dirt road just a few hundred meters from—wait for it—the Pakistan Military Academy—the country's equivalent of West Point. One BBC analyst speculates that "it will undoubtedly be a huge embarrassment to Pakistan that bin Laden was found not only in the country but also on the doorstep of the military academy." Embarrassing, perhaps; surprising, no.
The $1 million complex is said to be eight times larger than any other homes nearby, and was built six years ago. Officials tell the Daily News that "occupants were so paranoid they burned their garbage instead of having it picked up. Neighbors said guards often warned them to stay away from the house." The size and complexity of the property reportedly "shocked" US intelligence officers, who also found it interesting that there was no telephone or Internet connection at the compound.
During the late-night raid, one witness says U.S. helicopters sustained heavy fire from the ground, and the U.S. reports losing one helicopter due to "technical failure." U.S. officials say bin Laden was shot in the head as he "resisted the assault force." Two couriers and one of his sons were killed in the raid, and one woman was killed when she was reportedly used as a human shield. Two other women were injured. One local resident says, "I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast."
U.S. forces took bin Laden's body after the raid and buried it at sea, presumably to prevent any grave becoming a shrine.
