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Wife and eight children held after raid as sources close to extended family say many relatives hope death will close family chapter
Osama bin Laden's relatives kept a discreet silence as more details emerged of his immediate family's involvement in the US raid on the Pakistani town of Abbottabad which led to his death.
US officials amended their initial version of events to reveal that a woman who was killed during the attack on the compound was not Bin Laden's wife and was not used as a human shield.
Another woman, thought to be his wife, was injured when she confronted US forces and was treated at a military facility, the Combined military hospital, in Abbottabad. She is from Yemen. Bin Laden's son Khalid, in his early 20s, was also killed. He is believed to have been with his father in Afghanistan during the 2001 US invasion.
It also transpired that a 12- or 13 year-old girl told Pakistani officials she was Bin Laden's daughter, and had seen her father shot dead. US forces said two women and eight or nine children were left behind in the compound as one of their helicopters had crashed and they had no space on their remaining aircraft to take them.
Pakistan's foreign ministry said the Bin Laden family was "all in safe hands and being looked after in accordance with law. Some of them needing medical care are under treatment in the best possible facilities. As per policy, they will be handed over to their countries of origin."
Bin Laden, 53, reportedly had four or five wives and between 12 and 26 children, according to different sources.
Amal al-Ahmed Sadah, his fourth wife, is a Yemeni he married in Kandahar in the late 1990s. Sadah is thought to have returned to her homeland after 2001. The couple are said to have a daughter and two sons, born in 2002 and 2003.
The extended family is large and relations are complicated by the fact that many disowned Bin Laden after he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 for suspected terrorist activities and for criticism of the Al Saud dynasty.
The Bin Laden family is one of the most prominent in Saudi Arabia. The Binladin Group, a family construction business, is one of the kingdom's largest. It builds roads and bridges, renovates mosques and has expanded into property, textiles, telecommunications and distribution.
Arab sources say the Saudi government demanded it keep out of the media but in return it was guaranteed a lion's share of government construction contracts.
Relatives, including Bin Laden's first wife, live in Syria and Europe as well as Saudi Arabia. At least six of his children took refuge in Iran after 9/11 and were later placed under house arrest. They were allowed to leave last year after "humanitarian intervention" by the Saudi government and are now thought to be mostly in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The whereabouts of his son Hamza, who has played a key role in al-Qaida propaganda, are unknown.
Khaled Batarfi, a childhood friend who spoke to one Bin Laden family member, said they hoped that the killing would not trigger retaliation by al-Qaida or its allies.
"The general mood in the family is that this was a page of history that's closed and that family members hope there will be no violent responses," Batarfi told Bloomberg in a telephone interview from Jeddah.
Batarfi recalled how the young Bin Laden would take friends for rides in a white Chrysler to play soccer, have picnics and sometimes to contests to test their knowledge of Islam. Batarfi last saw Bin Laden in 1990 and he "never condoned his philosophy." He declined to say which family members he spoke to.
Bin Laden's former sister-in-law Carmen Binladin said she was sure the family would be mourning his death.
"My understanding of the Saudi society is I'm sure they are mourning because for them he is their brother. It is my perception and I'm sure that it must be difficult time for them. They consider him their brother," she told CNN. "Blood is thicker than anything and they still consider him as part of the family."
She remembered him as a "very religious man. When I was living in Saudi Arabia, he had started going to Afghanistan against the Soviets. I knew he was very religious but at that time in the early 1980s I never thought that he would come and take so many innocent lives."