Details of America's plan to find and kill Osama bin Laden are still emerging. Here's what reports have told us so far:
May Day, 2011:
1pm EST – Top advisers began to gather at the White House in preparation for the strike.
2pm EST – Obama joins his advisers to review the final preparations.
Meanwhile, in an affluent suburb near the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, 62 miles outside Islamabad, helicopters flew towards a heavily guarded mansion. Clues gathered since 9/11 led a small team of U.S. Special Forces to this place, and not the remote tribal areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden was said to be hiding. Given the go-ahead, the troops stormed the compound.
Forty minutes and a gunfight later, one of the world's most notorious terrorists lay dead, along with his son and two couriers. The BBC reports two women who were also inside at the time were injured and another died during the firefight. No American forces were injured in the raid, but CNN reports a U.S. helicopter crashed, and had to be destroyed with explosives set by U.S. troops for “security reasons.”
A senior administration official told CNN that any intelligence about bin Laden was not shared with foreign governments and the details of the raid were only known to a small group of individuals in the U.S. government. However, a high-level Pakistani intelligence official said to CNN their intelligence officers were also on standby in Abbottabad.
Read more:
Timeline: How the U.S. Found and Killed Osama bin Laden - TIME NewsFeed