Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the world's most wanted man, has been killed

Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the world's most wanted man, has been killed in a US operation in north-western Pakistan, Barack Obama has announced.

"Justice has been done," the US president said in a statement that America has been waiting a decade to hear.

US special forces launched a helicopter-borne assault on a closely guarded compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles north-east of Islamabad, on Sunday night, Obama and US officials said.

Bin Laden resisted the attackers and was killed along with three other men in a firefight. The operation lasted 40 minutes. The dead included Bin Laden's most trusted courier, who carried his messages to the outside world, and one of Bin Laden's sons, according to reports.

US forces "took custody" of Bin Laden's body, Obama said. The US stressed Islamic practices would be respected.

No Americans were killed.

Pictures on the Pakistani TV station Express 24/7 showed flames rising from what is said to be the site of Bin Laden's last stand: a building surrounded by trees and high walls.

There had been years of speculation that Bin Laden was hiding in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan or across the border in Afghanistan. But the town where he was eventually found lies a short distance from Islamabad, and is the home to the country's main military training institution, the Pakistan Military Academy, at Kakul. It is several hundred miles from Waziristan, where the CIA drone strike campaign has been concentrated.

The fact that Bin Laden was killed in a mainstream urban area of Pakistan will raise questions about how the six-foot-four fugitive, one of the most famous faces in the world, managed to survive in Pakistan for so long.