The 2011 killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces took place in Pakistan.
On 2 May 2011, U.S. special operations forces carried out Operation Neptune Spear at a compound in Abbottabad, a city in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. The raid was the culmination of a nearly decade-long international manhunt following the September 11, 2001, attacks, which al-Qaeda had planned and carried out under bin Laden’s leadership.
The U.S. team flew from Afghanistan, entered the compound by helicopter, and killed bin Laden during the assault. President Barack Obama announced the operation to the public later that day in the United States; because of the time difference, it was already 2 May in Pakistan but still 1 May in much of the United States.
The location can cause confusion because bin Laden had spent years in Afghanistan and the operation was launched from there. However, the compound itself was in Abbottabad, Pakistan, not Afghanistan. The raid also became diplomatically controversial because U.S. forces conducted it without advance notification to Pakistan’s government.