The Raid

Image taken from The Daily Mail

As soon as they realised what was happening, Bin Laden’s guards opened fire from the rooftop with rocket-propelled grenades and apparently managed to shoot down one of the Black Hawks.

A White House official said it was a heart-stopping moment for Barack Obama, echoing the disastrous ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Somalia in 1993 which left 18 US servicemen dead.

This time, the crew escaped unhurt and the team went ahead with the raid ‘even though they didn’t know if they would have a ride home at the end’, said the official.

As terrified townsfolk emerged from their homes to see what was going on, Pashto-speaking CIA agents told them to go back in and shut the doors.

Two dozen U.S. Navy Seals – special forces – wearing night-vision goggles dropped into the high-walled compound by sliding down ropes from Chinooks.

They stormed inside to secure the terror chief’s hideaway room by room, with head cameras relaying the action to the President and the director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, who was overseeing the operation at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Following the shootout with Bin Laden, his body was carried out and taken away in one of the helicopters. Three men, including one of his sons, and a woman, who tried to act as a human shield to save him, were also killed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1382860/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-Abbottabad-raid-ended-10-years-defiance-Obama-watched.html#ixzz1LIpolnD0