Clinton warns Taliban ‘you cannot wait us out’

WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned the Taliban Monday "you cannot wait us out" in Afghanistan, urging the insurgents to break with Al-Qaeda after US forces killed Osama bin Laden.

"Our message to the Taliban remains the same, but today, it may have even greater resonance," Clinton told reporters. "You cannot wait us out. You cannot defeat us. But you can make the choice to abandon Al-Qaeda and participate in a peaceful political process."

"Justice has been done," President Barack Obama declared in a dramatic televised address, sparking raucous celebrations across the United States, after an operation that officials said lasted less than 40 minutes.

The carnage rained down on New York and Washington by hijacked passenger planes on September 11, 2001 set in train war in Afghanistan against bin Laden's Taliban protectors and a decade of tumult as the United States then went to war in Iraq.

World leaders welcomed the news but warned that Al-Qaeda's willingness to wreak havoc was undimmed and that the possibility of reprisal attacks meant vigilance was more important than ever.

Pakistan's main Taliban faction threatened to attack Pakistan and the US, calling them "the enemies of Islam".

"If he has become a martyr, it is a great victory for us because martyrdom is the aim of all of us," spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan told AFP by phone.

An Internet outlet for official Al-Qaeda messages accepted its leader's killing and eulogised him as a "knight" who sacrificed his soul and money to fight the United States, monitoring group SITE said.

Obama said he had directed US armed forces to attack a heavily-fortified compound in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad, less than two hours' drive north of Islamabad, after a tip-off that first emerged last August.

"A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability," the president said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

Bin Laden's body was quickly buried at sea, US officials said. "We wanted to avoid a situation where it would become a shrine," one said.

Elite troops from the US Navy SEALs carried out the operation, killing bin Laden with a bullet to the head, a US official told AFP.

The SEALs, which stands for Sea, Air, Land, are used for some of the riskiest anti-terrorism missions and were loaned to the CIA for the mission, the official said.