Pakistan: Live-Tweeting Osama Bin Laden's Death from Abbottabad

This post is part of our special coverage The Death of Osama Bin Laden.

Saudi terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden's life was snuffed out when a CIA-led team attacked a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. One Twitter user, Sohaib Athar, who tweets as @ReallyVirtual, reportedly tweeted the raid, and his reactions so far.

Athar describes himself as “an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops.”

Here is his timeline:

@ReallyVirtual: Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).

@ReallyVirtual: Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter :-/

@ReallyVirtual: A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S

@ReallyVirtual: @m0hcin all silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too… the helicopter is gone too.

@ReallyVirtual: @m0hcin http://bit.ly/ljB6p6 seems like my giant swatter worked !

@ReallyVirtual: @m0hcin the few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani…

@han3yy: OMG :S Bomb Blasts in Abbottabad.. I hope everyone is fine :(

@ReallyVirtual: Since taliban (probably) don't have helicpoters, and since they're saying it was not “ours”, so must be a complicated situation #abbottabad

@ReallyVirtual: @kashaziz technically, it is unidentified until identified, and it is a flying object, so year, why the hell not, we have seen weirder stuff

@ReallyVirtual: The abbottabad helicopter/UFO was shot down near the Bilal Town area, and there's report of a flash. People saying it could be a drone.

@ReallyVirtual: @smedica people are saying it was not a technical fault and it was shot down. I heard it CIRCLE 3-4 times above, sounded purposeful.

@ReallyVirtual: @tahirakram very likely – but it was too noisy to be a spy craft, or, a very poor spy craft it was.

@ReallyVirtual: @smedica It must have been more, I started noticing the helicpoter when the noise got irritating – which part of Abbottabd are you in?

@ReallyVirtual: Here's the location of the Abbottabad crash according to some people >>> http://on.fb.me/khjf34

@ReallyVirtual: Two helicpoters, one down, could actually be the training accident scenario they're saying it was >> http://bit.ly/ioGE6O

@terminalxpk: A Major of the #Pakistan #Army's 19 FF, Platoon CO says incident at #Abbottabad where #helicopter crashed is accidental and not an “attack”

@terminalxpk: The Major also says no “missiles” were fired and all such exaggerated reports are nothing but rumours #Pakistan

@ReallyVirtual: and now I feel I must apologize to the pilot about the swatter tweets :-/

@ReallyVirtual: And now, a plane flying over Abbottabad…

@ReallyVirtual: Interesting rumors in the otherwise uneventful Abbottabad air today

@naqvi: I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected.

@ReallyVirtual: Report from a taxi driver: The army has cordoned off the crash area and is conducting door-to-door search in the surrounding

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed What really happened doesn't matter if there is an official story behind it that 99.999% of the world would believe

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed Another rumor: two copters that followed the crashed one were foreign Cobras – and got away

@ReallyVirtual: Report from a sweeper: A family also died in the crash, and one of the helicopter riders got away and is now being searched for.

@ReallyVirtual: @kursed Well, there were at least two copters last night, I heard one but a friend heard two, for 15-20 minutes.

@ReallyVirtual: RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed it < < Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/

@ReallyVirtual: I guess I should unsubscribe from the #abbottabad search on twitter before it kills my machine. Leave Abbottabad alone, Osama and Obama…

@ReallyVirtual: Damn its getting hard to RT some funny Abbottabad tweets, they're scrolling so fast :-(

@ReallyVirtual: Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.

@ReallyVirtual: and here come the mails from the mainstream media… *sigh*

@ReallyVirtual: For the curious, here is life in abbottabad two minutes ago http://twitpic.com/4s8nfq

Life in Abbottabad

Life in Abbottabad

@ReallyVirtual: The shopping plaza I'm in is almost entirely closed, probably mainly because the traffic is blocked in a few places

@ReallyVirtual: And the big question is – now that OBL does not live in Abbottabad, is it open to terrorist attacks too?

@DVNJr: Read @ReallyVirtual's stream. He unwittingly tweeted the helicopters’ raid on Osama bin Laden's compound.

@CClonts: He tweeted this live! Tweets begin at 9-hour indicator. RT @ReallyVirtual: Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event).

This post is part of our special coverage The Death of Osama Bin Laden.

8 comments

Cancel this reply

Join the conversation -> Khalid Jamil Rawat

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.