ISLAMABAD // Osama bin Laden's wife said the Al Qaeda kingpin had lived with family in a compound in Abbottabad for five years before he was shot dead by US forces, Pakistani security officials said Saturday.
His Yemeni wife was shot in the leg during the US Navy SEALs operation in which her husband died, and is undergoing medical treatment and interrogation in Pakistan along with 15 other relatives of bin Laden, the officials said.
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Last Updated: May 8, 2010
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On Sunday night US commandos flew in helicopters to the three-storey home in a suburb of the Pakistani town, where they discovered bin Laden on the third floor, shot him dead and flew off with his body, which was later buried at sea.
"She said in Arabic that bin Laden and his family were living in this compound for the last five years and he never left the compound," said one Pakistani security official familiar with the investigation.
"But this is only her statement and we have not yet corroborated it," the official added. A second security official confirmed the information.
The Pakistani officials said that three of bin Laden's wives were recovered from the house, all of them Yemeni or Saudi, and 13 of their children, along with the bodies of one of his sons, two Kuwaiti guards and a woman.
Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, who gave the information, is the youngest of his three wives and is aged 29, born on March 27, 1982 according to a copy of her Yemeni passport seen by AFP.
The identity of the two guards is subject to a Pakistani investigation.
Neighbours told AFP that the Pashtun brothers known as Arshad and Tariq were the only men who left the house regularly to go shopping.
But their real identities are not yet clear. Their ID cards list a fake address in the northwestern district of Charsadda.
Local media say they were Pakistanis born in Kuwait to a father who knew bin Laden.
Neighbours told AFP that they bought the land and built the villa in 2005, telling people in the neighbourhood that the women were their wives.
The women were seen out only very occasionally, were veiled and never got out of a modest red Suzuki minivan, the neighbours said.
