One of Osama bin Laden's wives stood between him and US Navy Seals as the world's most wanted terrorist was gunned down in yesterday's airborne assault on the al Qaida leader's safehouse deep in Pakistan.
He was holed up less than a mile from the country's military academy and not far from the capital Islamabad.
Details have emerged of the life and dramatic death of bin Laden, the day after US President Barack Obama made the stunning announcement that the al Qaida leader had been killed.
Mr Obama, while assured bin Laden was probably in the compound, did not know with certainty that the 10-year hunt for the notorious terrorist was at an end until his body was carried to one of four US Special Operations helicopters that had ferried in the American forces.
The president has described the end of bin Laden as "a good day for America".
The administration said DNA testing administered on the body before it was buried at sea from the deck of the USS Carl in the North Arabian Sea confirmed the man killed was indeed bin Laden.
Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation by a woman believed to be one of bin Laden's wives on site, and matching physical features like his height all helped confirm the identification.
White House officials are now deciding whether to release a photo of bin Laden's body. He was shot above his left eye, blowing away part of his skull.
"The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden," Mr Obama said, although security officials in the US and around the globe have warned against retaliatory al Qaida attacks.
Both Mr Obama and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said co-operation from the Pakistani government had helped lead US forces to the compound where he died.
But a cloud of suspicion hangs over Pakistan, where authorities have routinely denied bin Laden was in the country. US officials, however, said the sprawling bin Laden compound, with its elaborate security and 18ft walls, was built in 2005 apparently to serve as the terrorist leader's safe house.
Unanswered is the obvious question of how bin Laden could have gone unnoticed just down the road from the country's equivalent of the US military academy at West Point, New York, in a town swarming with military and intelligence personnel.
"People have been referring to this as hiding in plain sight," Mr Obama's counter-terrorism chief John Brennan said. "Clearly, this was something that was considered as a possibility. Pakistan is a large country. We are looking right now at how he was able to hold out there for so long and whether or not there was any type of support system within Pakistan that allowed him to stay there."
In addition to bin Laden, one of his sons, Khalid, was killed in the raid, Mr Brennan said. Bin Laden's wife was shot in the calf but survived, a US official said. Also killed were two of bin Laden's al Qaida facilitators, including the one who was apparently listed as the owner of the residence, Mr Brennan said.
Mr Obama gave preliminary orders for the attack on Friday shortly before flying to Alabama to inspect tornado damage, and aides set to work on the details. He gave the final directive on Sunday, and Mr Brennan called it one of the "gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory".
Mr Brennan said the president and his national security team monitored the raid from the White House Situation Room and expressed relief that elite forces had finally got bin Laden without losing any more American lives.
"It was probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time in the lives of the people who were assembled here," Mr Brennan said. "The minutes passed like days."
He strongly suggested a live video feed had been available - Seals customarily have video cameras attached to their helmets - and the White House released a photo showing Mr Obama, vice-president Joe Biden and top aides staring intently at something outside the picture. The White House did not say what they were looking at.
Mr Obama has reaped accolades from world leaders he had kept in the dark about the operation as well as plaudits from political opponents at home. Republican and Democratic congressional leaders alike gave him a standing ovation at an evening meeting that was planned before the assault but became a celebration of its success.
The dramatic developments came just months ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the hijacked-airliner assaults on the United States. Those attacks took nearly 3,000 lives, led the US into war in Afghanistan and Iraq and forever pierced the notion that the most powerful country on earth could not be hit on such a ferocious scale.
Retaliatory attacks against the US and Western targets could now come from members of al Qaida's core branch in the tribal areas of Pakistan, franchises in other countries or radicalised individuals in the US with al Qaida sympathies, according to a Homeland Security Department intelligence alert.
A prominent al Qaida commentator vowed revenge for bin Laden's death. "Woe to his enemies. By God, we will avenge the killing of the Sheik of Islam," he wrote under his online name Assad al-Jihad2. "Those who wish that jihad has ended or weakened, I tell them: Let us wait a little bit."