SIX children and two wives of slain al-Qaida head Osama bin Laden were taken into custody by Pakistani forces, yesterday, China’s Xinhua said, quoting a local channel.

One of bin Laden’s sons was killed during the operation, the report said, adding that the Pakistani forces also arrested four close friends of bin Laden.

It was not clear if the Urdu channel mentioned the U.S. team but Xinhua quoted the channel as saying the children, the wives and friends of bin Laden were arrested during a search operation Monday morning by the Pakistani forces in a mountainous area about 38 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

Separately, Xinhua said the Urdu TV channel Geo News quoted Pakistani intelligence officials as saying bin Laden was killed in a search operation by the Pakistani forces after a Pakistani army helicopter was shot down Monday morning in Abbotabad, a mountainous town north of Islamabad.

The report said a Pakistani helicopter was shot down about 1:20 a.m. local time by unidentified people in the Sikandarabad area of Abbotabad, which then led to the search operation and subsequent exchange of fire.

The report said the Pakistani forces later arrested some Arab women and children and some armed people who later allegedly confessed to the Pakistani forces they were with bin Laden.

Al-Qaida condemns killing

A TOP al-Qaida ideologue, yesterday, vowed revenge for the killing of Osama Bin Laden by U.S. forces, in the first jihadist admission of the militant leader’s death.

The prominent commentator, going by the online name “Assad al-Jihad2,” posted on extremist websites a long eulogy for bin Laden and said the Islamic holy war against the West was far from over.

He wrote: “Woe to his enemies. By God, we will avenge the killing of the Sheik of Islam. Those who wish that jihad has ended or weakened, I tell them: Let us wait a little bit.”

Militant websites with links to al-Qaida regularly post long interviews with al-Jihad2 on the protocols of waging holy war. He is also often used to resolve questions of doctrine.

“The battle between us and international tyranny is long and will not be stopped by the martyrdom of our beloved one, the lion of Islam,” said al-Jihad2, whose own online name means lion of jihad. “How many martyrdom seekers have been born today?”

U.S. forces raided bin Laden’s heavily guarded compound in a suburb of Pakistan’s capital late Sunday, killing him, his son, a woman and two others.

The secret team that killed bin Laden

FROM Ghazi Air Base in Pakistan, the modified MH_60 helicopters made their way to the garrison suburb of Abbottabad, about 30 miles from the centre of Islamabad. Aboard were Navy SEALs, flown across the border from Afghanistan, along with tactical signals, intelligence collectors, and navigators using highly classified hyper spectral imagers.

After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap – boom, boom- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back. One had experienced mechanical failure and was destroyed by U.S. forces, military and White House officials tell National Journal.

Were it not for this high-value target, it might have been a routine mission for the specially trained and highly mythologized SEAL Team Six, officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, but known even to the locals at their home base Dam Neck in Virginia as just DevGru.

This HVT was special, and the raids required practice, so they replicated the one-acre compound at Camp Alpha, a segregated section of Bagram Air Base. Trial runs were held in early April.

DevGru belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command, an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified standing task forces and special-missions units. They report to the president and operate worldwide based on the legal (or extra-legal) premises of classified presidential directives.

Osama bin Laden timeline

Key events in the life of the former al-Qaida leader and alleged mastermind of 9/11 attacks
• 1957 (exact date never confirmed) Born Osama bin Mohammad bin Awad bin Laden in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the seventh son among dozens of children of a wealthy businessman
•1970 Father dies

•1974 Marries distant relative
•1976 Studies economics and management at King Abdul-Aziz University in Jeddah
•1979, December Soviet Union invades Afghanistan

•1984 Bin Laden involved in Peshawar supporting Arab volunteers to fight Soviets: moves between Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Sudan
• 1988 Al-Qaida – “the Base” – established in Afghanistan as centre for radical Muslims joined in opposition to the US, Israel and its allies

•1993 Bin Laden family expels Osama as shareholder in its complex of businesses
•1994 Saudi Arabia revokes his citizenship
•1995 Saudi Arabia claims Bin Laden links to Riyadh car bombing, six killed including five Americans, 60 injured

•1996 Bin Laden leaves Sudan for Afghanistan. Issues fatwa against all US military personnel, faxed to supporters across the world
•1998 Truck bomb explosions at US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 including 12 Americans. Bin Laden added to FBI’s “10 most wanted fugitives” list

• 2000 Al-Qaida claims responsibility for strike on US destroyer Cole at Yemeni port of Aden. Seventeen soldiers killed

• 2001, 11 September Hijacked planes destroy the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Centre and target the Pentagon, killing nearly 3,000. President George W Bush says he is wanted “dead or alive”
•2001, December US backed anti-Taliban forces capture Bin Laden’s base in the Tora Bora mountains in Afghanistan, but find no trace of Bin Laden

•2002, September Al-Jazeera broadcasts poor-quality tape claimed to be voice of Bin Laden, praising 9/11 hijackers for changing “the course of history”

•2008, May Bin Laden urges Muslims to break Israeli blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza strip
• 2011, January Bin Laden says in taped message that French hostages held in Niger will not be freed unless France pulls troops out of all Muslim lands