Osama bin Laden dead: Graphic new photos and raid details emerge
New details and photos of the raid carried out by the U.S. special ops forces on Sunday that killed dreaded terrorist Osama bin Laden have emerged and they both have failed to lift the fog of confusion as to how exactly bin Laden was killed and who were the men that died with him.
On Sunday, U.S. President Barack Obama said bin Laden died in 'a firefight and on Monday, the White House backed it up by saying the terrorist was armed.
The government officials also said a woman who was being used as a human shield, was shot dead in the raid.
However, on Tuesday, the U.S. officials backtracked on both accounts - they said bin Laden was unarmed when he was shot dead and it was his wife who tried to protect him from the gunfire - she was not a human shield and she was shot in her leg but did not die.
The rest of the story has not been changed so far - that in the first floor of bin Laden's building, two Al-Qaeda couriers were killed and a woman died in the cross-fire.
The second and third floors were occupied by bin Laden and his family.
There was concern that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and indeed he resisted, White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
In the room with bin Laden, a women - bin Laden's wife - rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed, he said.
bin Laden's son was also shot dead but Carney did not say which of bin Laden's adult sons was killed in the raid - Hamza or Khalid. Details are also missing on what has happened to the body of bin Laden's son.
Meanwhile, Reuters has released graphic new photos (VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED) of the people shot dead in bin Laden's mansion.
Reuters said a Pakistani security official had entered the compund soon after the raid ended. The photos were taken by the security official and later sold to Reuters.
The photos show three unidentified men lying in pool of blood. None of them looks like bin Laden. None of the photos show the men armed.
Two men in the photo were dressed in traditional Pakistani garb and one in a t-shirt, with blood streaming from their ears, noses and mouths.
Two photos show a computer cable and what looks like a child's plastic green and orange water pistol lying under the right shoulder of one of the dead men. A large pool of blood has formed under his head.
A second shows another man with a streak of blood running from his nose across his right cheek and a large band of blood across his chest.
A third man, in a T-shirt, is on his back in a large pool of blood which appears to be from a head wound.
Based on the time-stamps on the pictures, the earliest one was dated May 2, 2:30 a.m., approximately an hour after the completion of the raid in which bin Laden was killed, Reuters reported.
Reuters said it is confident of the authenticity of the purchased images because among the photos purchased, some showed the outside of the trash-strewn compound and the wreckage of the helicopter the United States abandoned.
The details in the photos appear to show a wrecked helicopter from the assault, matching details from photos taken independently on Monday, the news service provider said.
U.S. forces lost a helicopter in the raid due to a mechanical problem and later destroyed it.
The pictures are also taken in sequence and are all the same size in pixels, indicating they have not been tampered with. The time and date in the photos as recorded in the digital file's metadata match lighting conditions for the area as well as the time and date imprinted on the image itself, it said.
But what is a toy pistol doing in the house of the world's most wanted terrorist? Were bin Laden and his men playing cops and robbers? Was a child present when the raid took place? Who will give these answers?
Meanwhile a look at the most recent photos below is enough to justify why Obama does not want the photos of bin Laden's dead body released. The reason is simple - unlike Osama, Obama is a man of dignity, decency and respect.
© Copyright IBTimes 2024. All rights reserved.