Mission accomplished

Two shots killed Osama bin Laden, one in his chest and one in his left eye. ‘Two taps’ is standard practice for close-quarter shootings — firing twice takes virtually no longer than firing once and you increase (without quite doubling) your chance of an instant kill.

He was in his top-floor bedroom, in the dark, and his killers wore night-vision goggles. He died 15 minutes after the first sounds of attack — the roaring of helicopters, the crash-landing of one outside the compound, the blowing of a steel door in the wall. During those fateful 15 minutes he waited with one of his wives in the pitch black of that small room, paralysed perhaps by fear or indecision and hampered by the design of his house. Block-like, it was built in segregated compartments with few small windows, intended to frustrate observation.  But these very defensive measures also made it difficult for the inhabitants to see or hear what was going on.