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Pakistanis unwittingly live-tweet US raid on Osama hideout
Few details were revealed by U.S. President Barack Obama about the US military operation Sunday that resulted in the killing of Al-Queda leader Osama bin Laden. But it was almost inevitable in this age that someone would live tweet the event in the mountain tourist destination of Abbottabad, Pakistan where bin Laden was hiding. Sohaib Athar (@ReallyVirtual on Twitter) unwittingly tweeted about the arrival of foreign helicopters and an explosion, even a chopper crash that could not be officially confirmed. His tweets came out several hours before Obama announced bin Laden's death. "Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)," said Athar, who describes himself as "“an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops." His following tweets showed a vivid picture of what soon ensued:
Another Twitter user in Pakistan, Mohcin Shah (@m0hcin), also provided information about the U.S. raid against bin Laden. It first started out as a phone call that nobody answered ("No one is picking phone in Abbottabad, not even the landlines"), which later became a worried tweet of concern for his family: "Just talked to family in Abbottabad, say they heard three blasts one after another, don't know what really happened." His tweets after that provided clues as to what happened, similar to what Athar described earlier: Athar and Shah's tweets came several hours prior to the rumors of Osama's death wildly circulating on social networking sites. Enterprising netizens, meanwhile, provided an eagle's eye view of the location of bin Laden's mansion through Google Maps:
