Osama was living in Abbottabad for five years: Wife

Islamabad, May 6: While the US-led forces were hunting for Osama bin Laden in Pakistan's unruly tribal areas for years, the al-Qaeda chief had been living a secluded life in a million-dollar mansion in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad for five years, according to one of his wives.

The Yemeni woman said bin Laden had been living in the compound in Abbottabad for the past five years, Geo News Channel quoted unnamed senior Pakistani military officials as saying.

Bin Laden usually confined himself to two or three rooms and never went outside, she told the officials.

The report said that women and children found in the compound included three wives of bin Laden. One of the women was injured in the firing.

The military officials also said that bin Laden's daughter, found in the compound, had told them that she had seen her father being killed on the upper floor of a building and then dragged down a flight of stairs.

A woman killed during the raid, previously described in some accounts as bin Laden's wife, was actually the wife of a Pakistani guard of the al-Qaeda leader, the officials were quoted as saying.

The officials said the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies were not informed about the US raid.

They contended that Pakistan had given the US a lot of information on bin Laden's whereabouts in the past two years, including intelligence gleaned from intercepts of some phone conversations in May and August last year.

PTI