Bin Laden Is Dead, President Obama Says

Osama bin Laden has been killed, President Obama announced Sunday night, almost 10 years after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The text of the president’s television address is here. The Times describes the scenes at the World Trade Center, Times Square and Washington. Our colleagues on The Lede blog are also following reaction from around the world, here, and political reaction on The Caucus blog, here.

From Kabul, The New York Times’s bureau chief Alissa J. Rubin writes, ‘Afghans Fear West May See Death as the End’:

KABUL, Afghanistan — In Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was based for many years and where Al Qaeda helped to train and pay insurgents, there was relief and uncertainty about how his death would play out in the fraught regional power politics now shaping the war.

While senior political figures welcomed the news of his death, they cautioned that it did not necessarily translate into an immediate military victory over the Taliban, and urged the United States and NATO not to use it as a reason to withdraw…

Former members of the Taliban who are now part of the reconciliation efforts with the movement said they believed that Bin Laden’s death would drive the Taliban to make a deal to stop fighting and become a political force in Afghanistan.

The Afghan Taliban had no immediate statement.

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