Osama bin Laden used one of his wives as a human shield in an apparent attempt to try to save his own life during the raid by US covert forces in which he was killed, a top US official said.
Head of US counter-terrorism John Brennan told a White House media briefing that bin Laden died in a way that would harm his image among supporters, Britain's Telegraph newspaper is reported as saying.
"Living in this million dollar plus compound, in an area that is far away from the front, hiding behind a woman: it really speaks to just how false his narrative has been over the years," Brennan said.
"There was family at that compound, and there was a female who was, in fact, in the line of fire that reportedly was used as a shield to shield bin Laden from the incoming fire."
Pressed on reports the woman shot dead by Navy SEALs during a firefight at a compound in Abbottabad in Pakistan was one of bin Laden's four wives, Brennan said: "That's my understanding."
The news came after other reports that bin Laden went down firing at the Navy SEALs who stormed his compound.
An official familiar with the operation says bin Laden was hit by a barrage of carefully aimed return fire.
The official says two dozen SEALs in night-vision goggles dropped into the high-walled compound in Pakistan by sliding down ropes from Chinook helicopters in the overnight raid.
US officials say bin Laden was killed near the end of the 40-minute raid. The SEALs retrieved bin Laden's body and turned the remaining detainees over to Pakistani authorities.
The US used multiple means to confirm the identity of Osama bin Laden during and after the firefight in which he was killed, before placing his body in the North Arabian Sea from aboard a US aircraft carrier, senior US officials said.
The al-Qaeda leader was identified by name by a woman, believed to be one of his wives, who was present at his Pakistan compound at the time of the US raid. He also was visually identified by members of the US raid squad, a senior intelligence official told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. Under ground rules set by the Pentagon, the intelligence official and two senior defence officials could not be identified by name.
The intelligence official also said quite a bit of unspecified material was collected by US forces during the raid. Without describing the material, the official said it is being analysed by a team of people at the CIA.
The officials said bin Laden was killed toward the end of the firefight, which took place overnight on Monday in a building at a compound north of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. His body was put aboard the USS Carl Vinson
Traditional Islamic procedures for handling the remains were followed, the officials said, including washing the corpse, placing it in a white sheet before a sea burial.
The intelligence official said the DNA match, using DNA from several family members, provided virtual certainty that it was bin Laden's body.
Officials did not immediately say where or how the testing was done but the test explains why President Barack Obama was confident to announce the death to the world Sunday night. Obama provided no details on the identification process.
The US is believed to have collected DNA samples from bin Laden family members in the years since the September 11, 2001 attacks that triggered the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the US also had fingerprints or some other means to identify the body on site.
Bin Laden was shot in the head during the firefight with members of an elite American counter-terrorism unit that launched a helicopter-borne raid on the al-Qaeda leader's compound, US officials said. Officials said the US special forces who stormed the compound came face to face with their prey.
US officials also said bin Laden was identified through "facial recognition," a reference to technology for mapping unique facial characteristics, but it was not clear exactly how the Navy SEAL troops performed the comparison.
The body was photographed before being buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration.
The US official who disclosed the burial at sea said it was not possible to find a country willing to accept the remains. Pressed by reporters to say which countries had been contacted about taking the remains, the official said, "I'm not going into details of those conversations."
Obama said the remains had been handled in accordance with Islamic custom, which requires speedy burial.
An official at Monday's Pentagon briefing said the body, once aboard the USS Carl Vinson, was washed and placed in a white sheet. It was then placed in a "weighted bag," and a military officer read prepared "religious remarks," which were translated into Arabic by a "native speaker" who was not further identified.
The body was then placed on a "prepared flat board, tipped up, whereupon the deceased's body eased into the sea," the official said.
Details on how the body was transported to the ship were not provided.
Positive identification of the remains is considered a critically important part of the US operation, given the symbolic importance of bin Laden's leadership of the Islamic extremist movement that was based in Afghanistan until the US invaded in October 2001.
When al-Qaida's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a US airstrike in June 2006, DNA tests were performed by the FBI to positively identify the remains. The US military also performed an autopsy, in part to dispel allegations in the immediate aftermath of the airstrike that the terrorist leader had been beaten or shot by US soldiers while in American custody.
It was not clear today whether the Obama administration intended to release its photos of bin Laden's body.
In July 2003, when US forces killed Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, in a gunbattle in northern Iraq, the US military released graphic after-death photographs in an effort to prove to Iraqis that they were dead. Two of the photos showed the first man, identified as Qusai, with bruises and blood spots around his eyes. That face was far more intact than the other, identified as Odai; the mouth was open with the teeth showing.
