Details of Bin Laden’s life inside the compound in Abbottabad follow anonymous briefings by Pakistani intelligence officials involved in the questioning of Yemen-born Amal Ahmed al-Sadah and two other wives.

Sadah, 29, who is believed to have been shot in the calf after rushing at US Navy Seals when they burst into the room where her husband was sheltering, said she had remained on the upper floors of the house since moving there in 2006, the Associated Press reported. Bin Laden had also lived there for that period, she is said to have confirmed.

ABC News reported that Sadah said that while her husband was living in the house he never left two rooms, one of them the bedroom where he was killed. “He used two rooms on one of the floors,” ABC quoted Asad Munir, a former officer from Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency, as saying. “He never went anywhere.”

US troops removed Bin Laden’s body and reportedly the body of another man, but they are not believed to have taken away any living suspects – possibly because space was limited after one of their two Black Hawk helicopters was damaged on landing and had to be destroyed.

Pakistani authorities have been left to question the three wives and are responsible for eight or nine children found in the compound.

Munir told ABC that the wives had been taken to Islamabad for questioning, describing the usual procedure: “We give them a questionnaire with 20 questions. We change the order of questions every three or four days.” Interrogators then look for discrepancies in the answers: “For telling lies you have to have very good memory. There’s a way to find out. No one will tell you the first day the correct answer.”

The wives’ testimony could help explain how Bin Laden apparently spent years in hiding not, as previously believed, in remote tribal regions but in an affluent suburb close to a military academy a short drive from the capital, Islamabad.

Pakistani officials said US investigators had not been given access to the wives, and given the tensions following the raid – carried out by the US without prior warning to Pakistan – this was unlikely to happen.

Separately, a senior Pakistani intelligence official said Bin Laden’s final days had been “cash-strapped”, and al-Qaida had split into two factions, the larger controlled by the group’s deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The briefing was given to Pakistani reporters, one of whom passed on details to the Associated Press.
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More than 60 protesters and almost 70 government forces were injured on one of the worst days in nearly two months of violent clashes between troops and residents who strongly oppose India’s rule over the predominantly Muslim region.

The top elected official in the predominantly Muslim region, Omar Abdullah, met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Monday to discuss defusing the crisis that has caused 40 deaths over seven weeks.

“The need is to end the cycle of violence. Some semblance of normalcy has to be a precursor for any political initiative,” Abdullah told reporters.

The recent unrest in the Himalayan region — divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both — is reminiscent of the late 1980s, when protests against New Delhi’s rule sparked an armed conflict that has since claimed 68,000 lives, mostly civilians.

Kashmiri Muslims have held massive street protests, attacked security camps with rocks and burned police stations. Government forces have responded by using live ammunition and tear gas to break up the protests.

Clashes erupted again Monday in dozens of places across the region, as protesters defied a round-the-clock curfew.

At least two people were killed and another three wounded when government forces fired to disperse protesters blocking a highway in Sangam, a village south of Srinagar, said a police officer on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters.

Government forces also fired on thousands of people holding street protests in the southern town of Kakpora, killing one and wounding five, the officer said.

As the news of the killing reached nearby villages, thousands more took to streets and burned a police station and scores of vehicles parked there, the officer said.

In the northern village of Kralpora, protesters set a security bunker on fire and ransacked a counterinsurgency police force camp, the officer said. Troops opened fire, killing one protester and wounding seven others, three critically, he said.

In another police shooting, one person was killed and another wounded in the southern village of Chawalgam, the officer said.

In the southern town of Kulgam, another protester was killed when government forces opened fire and used tear gas to control hundreds of marchers. At least 12 people were injured, four of them critically with bullet wounds, the police officer said.

One young boy was killed in a clash between the protesters and paramilitary forces in Srinagar, the officer said.

Local residents claimed that the boy was beaten to death by security forces. Police said they were investigating the cause of the death.

Another 20 people were injured in the southern town of Rajpora when police opened fire and used tear gas to quell the protesters who burned a police station, the officer said.

Protesters also burned a government building and a local intelligence office in Budgam, a town to the west of Srinagar, the region’s main city. Four protesters were injured there, the officer said.

The other injuries occurred in clashes elsewhere in the region, the officer said.

A state police statement said 39 police officers and 28 paramilitary soldiers also were injured in the daylong clashes with protesters.

In Srinagar, troops announced over public address systems mounted on their vehicles that stern action would be taken against those violating the curfew.

However, hundreds of protesters came out on the streets in several neighborhoods, chanting “Go India! Go back” and “We want freedom.” Troops fired warning shots and tear gas to disperse the protesters, the police officer said.

Abdullah, in New Delhi, described the situation in the Kashmir valley as worrisome and said that “some anti-social elements are hellbent to foment trouble, mayhem and bloodshed in the valley to satiate their political designs.”

On Sunday, he appealed to people of all shades of opinion, the media and religious heads to join the government in stopping the bloodshed, adding that he and his government cannot do it alone.

Last week, local authorities asked two retired judges to investigate the deaths of protesters, but the move has failed to calm the anger.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir since 1947.

Separatist politicians and militants reject Indian sovereignty over Kashmir and want to carve out a separate homeland or merge with predominantly Muslim Pakistan.

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Troops kill 7 protesters in Indian-ruled Kashmir

The assault, which wounded at least 111 people, was one of the deadliest in Pakistan this year. There was speculation that the bombers were targeting anti-Taliban tribal elders visiting the government office in the village of Yakaghund, part of the Mohmand tribal area in the country’s northwest.

The attackers struck within seconds of each other as two U.S. senators met with Pakistani leaders in the capital, Islamabad, to discuss their countries’ cooperation in the fight against terrorism, much of it being waged in the lawless tribal belt bordering Afghanistan where al-Qaida and the Taliban have long had redoubts.

One of the bombs appeared fairly small but the other was huge, officials said. At least one bomber was on a motorcycle.

The bombers detonated their explosives near the office of Rasool Khan, a deputy Mohmand administrator who escaped unharmed. The tribal elders, including those involved in setting up militias to fight the Taliban, were in the building, but none was hurt, according to Mohmand chief administrator Amjad Ali Khan.

Video footage showed dozens of men searching through piles of yellow brick and mud rubble for survivors. Women and children were among the victims.

Abdul Wadood, 19, was sitting in a vehicle at the time of the bombings.

“I only heard the deafening blast and lost consciousness,” said Wawood, who was being treated for head and arm wounds in Peshawar, the main city in the northwest, about 15 miles (25 kilometers) away. “I found myself on a hospital bed after opening my eyes. I think those who planned or carried out this attack are not humans.”

Some 70 to 80 shops were damaged or destroyed, while damage to a prison building allowed 28 prisoners — ordinary criminals, not militants — to flee, said Rasool Khan, who gave the casualty figures.

Near the attack site, officials had been distributing wheelchairs to disabled people and equipment to poor farmers, Amjad Ali Khan said. It was unclear how many participants in that event were among the victims.

Khan disputed reports that the aid was provided through U.S. funding, saying it came from Pakistani government funds.

However, U.S. Embassy spokesman Rick Snelsire confirmed that on the previous day Pakistani staff from a Washington-based contractor that receives USAID money had been giving out farm equipment in the village. The staff of that contractor, AED or Academy for Educational Development, were staying in the area, but were not believed to have been the targets Friday, Snelsire said.

Pakistani Taliban spokesmen could not be immediately reached after the attack. There were scattered reports that the militant group’s branch in Mohmand had claimed responsibility and said it was targeting the elders.

Mohmand is one of several areas in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt where Taliban and al-Qaida members are believed to be hiding. The Pakistani army has carried out operations in Mohmand, but it has been unable to extirpate the militants. Its efforts to rely on citizen militias to take on the militants have had limited success there.

Nevertheless, there have been fewer attacks in Pakistan this year than in previous years — most notably in the northwest. In the last three months of 2009, more than 500 people were killed in a surge of attacks in the country.

Although information from the tribal belt is difficult to verify independently, the Pakistani army’s operations and U.S. missile strikes are believed to have calmed the situation since then.

The attacks that have occurred in 2010 have inflicted large numbers of casualties.

On New Year’s Day, a suicide car bomber struck a sports event near a meeting of tribesmen who supervise an anti-Taliban militia near the South Waziristan tribal area. At least 96 people were confirmed dead.

Some of the worst attacks in 2010 have taken place far from the northwest, in cities such as Karachi in the south and Lahore in eastern Punjab province.

Still, the main bases of militant groups in Pakistan are believed to be in the northwest, particularly the tribal regions, which have semiautonomous status and where the government has long had little influence.

Washington is watching closely how Pakistan handles its militant crisis, pushing the South Asian country to wage war on Taliban and al-Qaida fighters who use its territory to plan attacks against Western troops in Afghanistan.

U.S. Sens. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed, a committee member, visited Pakistani officials in Islamabad on Friday. In a statement issued after his meeting with the American lawmakers, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said both countries should try harder to increase mutual trust.

He said Pakistan was doing its utmost to combat militancy, and “expected friendly countries like (the) U.S. to share with it credible and actionable information rather than indulging in blame game, in order to achieve our shared and common goal of succeeding against militancy.”

Over the past decade Pakistan and the U.S. have frequently questioned each other’s motives in the region.

Pakistan has been suspected of fomenting problems in Afghanistan as part of its regional struggle with India, while Islamabad has suggested that Washington gives favorable treatment to New Delhi in areas such as nuclear armament.

In a reference to its larger archrival, Gilani said the U.S. should take a “fair and nondiscriminatory approach … in its relations with the regional countries.”

In recent visits to Pakistan, U.S. officials have stressed that the relationship between the two countries has improved.

source: The Associated Press