White House says Al-Qaeda chief was unarmed when he was killed as Pakitan insists world shares blame

Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was unarmed when US special forces shot and killed him, the White House said, as it vowed to "get to the bottom" of whether Pakistan helped him elude a 10-year manhunt.

The revelation that bin Laden was unarmed contradicted an earlier US account that he had participated in a firefight with the helicopter-borne American commandos.

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Tuesday cited the "fog of war" - a phrase suggested by a reporter - as a reason for the initial misinformation. Bin Laden was shot in the head. "It's fair to say that it's a gruesome photograph," Carney said. "I'll be candid. There are sensitivities here in terms of the appropriateness of releasing photographs."

Carney insisted bin Laden resisted when US forces stormed his compound in the 40-minute operation. He would not say how. "There was concern that bin Laden would oppose the capture operation and, indeed, he resisted," Carney said. "A woman ... bin Laden's wife, rushed the US assaulter and was shot in the leg but not killed. Bin Laden was then shot and killed. He was not armed."

White House counter-terrorism Chief John Brennan, briefing reporters earlier this week, had indicated bin Laden was armed. "He was engaged in a firefight ... and whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don't know," he said.

The strike team opened fire in response to "threatening moves" as they reached the third-floor room where they found bin Laden, CIA Director Leon Panetta told PBS television. "The authority here was to kill bin Laden," he said. "And obviously, under the rules of engagement, if he had in fact thrown up his hands, surrendered and didn't appear to be representing any kind of threat, then they were to capture him. But they had full authority to kill him."

WORLD SHARES BIN LADEN BLAME
Meanwhile, the US tried to establish whether its ally Pakistan had helped the Al-Qaeda chief elude a worldwide manhunt. Pakistan faced national embarrassment, a leading Islamabad newspaper said, in how to explain that the world's most-wanted man was able to live for years in the military garrison town of Abbottabad, just north of the capital.

"There is an intelligence failure of the whole world, not just Pakistan alone," Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani told reporters in Paris. "If there are ... lapses from the Pakistan side, this means there are lapses from the whole world."

Pakistan needed "the support of the entire world" to eradicate terrorism, Gilani added. "We are fighting and paying a heavy price to combat terrorism and extremism... fighting not only for Pakistan but for the peace, prosperity and progress of the whole world."

BIN LADEN OPERATION JUSTIFIED
Meanwhile, the head of NATO Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Wednesday the US operation in which bin Laden was killed on Monday was justified.

"The bottom line here is that the founder of Al-Qaeda has been responsible for the death of thousands of innocent people, and I think it has been justified to carry out this operation against him," NATO Secretary-General told a news briefing. "And I do hope that this very successful operation will lead to undermining one of the world's most dangerous terrorist networks, and I think that is what counts for a huge majority of people across the globe."

Rasmussen added that the death of bin Laden would not change NATO's Afghan mission or transition timetable.