Associated Press

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Osama bin Laden, the glowering mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks that killed thousands of Americans, was killed in an operation led by the United States, President Barack Obama said late Sunday.

A small team of Americans carried out the attack and took custody of bin Laden’s remains, the president said in a dramatic late-night statement at the White House.

A jubilant crowd gathered outside the White House as word spread of bin Laden’s death after a global manhunt that lasted nearly a decade.

“Justice has been done,” the president said.

The development comes just months before the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Centers and Pentagon, orchestrated by bin Laden’s al-Qaida organization, that killed more than 3,000 people.

The attacks set off a chain of events that led the United States into wars in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, and America’s entire intelligence apparatus was overhauled to counter the threat of more terror attacks at home.

Al-Qaida also was blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 231 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.

Former President George W. Bush says he has congratulated Obama after hearing about the death of bin Laden.

In a statement Sunday night, Bush said Obama called that U.S. forces had killed bin Laden. Bush said he also congratulated the men and women of the military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to the mission.

Bush said, “This momentous achievement marks a victory for America, for people who seek peace around the world, and for all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001.”

He also said the “fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says Americans have kept their promise after Sept. 11 to capture or kill bin Laden.

Bloomberg says the killing of the terrorist leader doesn’t lessen the suffering Americans experienced at his hands the day the World Trade Center was destroyed but is a “critically important victory” for the nation. He says it’s a tribute to the men and women in the armed forces who’ve fought so hard.

Bloomberg says in a statement he hopes news of bin Laden’s demise will “bring some closure and comfort to all those who lost loved ones” that day.

At several points in the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, bin Laden’s capture or death had appeared imminent. After the March 2003 arrest of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials in Islamabad and Washington were paraded out to deny a consistent stream of rumors that bin Laden had been captured.

U.S. forces poured into the border region looking for him and former Taliban, and Taliban in hiding said bin Laden had constantly been on the move, traveling through the mountains with a small entourage of security.

Through it all, bin Laden vowed repeatedly that he was willing to die in his fight to drive the Israelis from Jerusalem and Americans from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1954. He became known as the most pious of the sons among his wealthy father’s 54 children. Bin Laden’s path to militant Islam began as a teenager in the 1970s when he got caught up in the fundamentalist movement then sweeping Saudi Arabia.