President Barack Obama paid solemn tribute on the site of the downed Twin Towers at Ground Zero in Manhattan, days after 9/11 architect Osama bin Laden was shot dead by American commandos in a Pakistani lair.
The fallout from Monday’s pre-dawn raid on the Al-Qaeda leader’s compound in Abbottabad intensified with Pakistan’s military demanding that the United States cut its troop presence in the country to a “minimum.”
After days of questions in Washington over how bin Laden could have found shelter under military noses, Pakistan’s army chief of staff General Ashfaq Kayani threatened to “review” cooperation in the event of another US raid.
Pakistan is a key US ally in the war against Islamist militants in Afghanistan, but the relationship between Washington and Islamabad was tense even before the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks was gunned down.
Pakistan’s military has admitted “shortcomings” in developing intelligence on bin Laden’s whereabouts and ordered an investigation.
In a moment of high symbolism in New York, Mr Obama laid a wreath at Ground Zero before hugging relatives of those killed when Al-Qaeda extremists, presumed to be acting on bin Laden’s orders, plowed their hijacked planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Despite the momentous nature of bin Laden’s death, almost a decade after his attacks drove a wedge between the West and the Muslim world, the ceremony was low-key and sombre: a remembrance of those fallen rather than a victory celebration.
Mr Obama, making his first visit to Ground Zero as President, did not make a speech, but solemnly bowed his head and observed a moment of silence after laying the wreath along with city officials and the police and fire chiefs.
He did speak briefly earlier at a firehouse that lost 15 men battling the infernos on 9/11, issuing a stark message to America’s enemies around the world. “When we say we will never forget, we mean what we say,” he said.
Meanwhile today Mr Obama is meeting members of the secretive team of elite commandos that carried out the covert operation inside Pakistan that killed Osama bin Laden, a US official said.
Mr Obama also met Admiral William McRaven, chairman of Joint Special Operations Command in the Oval Office on Wednesday to thank him for the successful assault on bin Laden’s lair in Abbottabad.
Meanwhile a US drone attacked a Saudi Al-Qaeda leader in southern Yemen yesterday, but missed him and killed two local members of the militant network, a security source and witnesses said.
The drone had targeted the Saudi as he drove to the home of local Al-Qaeda men, the security source said, asking not to be identified.
When the two local Al-Qaeda men rushed out in their own car, they were hit and killed.
The source did not specify that the unmanned aircraft was American and there was no official word from the Yemeni authorities on who carried out the strike.
But the witnesses insisted it was a US drone that fired the missile.