Photos emerge of other men killed in U.S. raid on bin Laden compound

Only hours after President Barack Obama said he had decided against releasing photos of Osama bin Laden's dead body, Reuters has obtained and released gruesome photographs of the bodies of three dead men found at the compound in the aftermath of the U.S. raid.

Reuters said the batch of photos was sold to them by a Pakistani security official who took them after entering the compound Monday following the secret U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed bin Laden and four others. (Understandably, the Pakistani security official requested anonymity, Reuters said, adding it is confident of the photos' authenticity.)

The Guardian published the photos obtained by Reuters on its website, as well as one additional photograph that Reuters itself did not release, that appears to be of the body of bin Laden's son.

The photos show three dead men, all with evident gunshot wounds. The photos of the dead are graphic and explicit; The Envoy is not posting them here, and please be warned in advance if you click through the Guardian links.

This photograph (warning, gruesome) of one of the dead men appears to resemble Osama bin Laden; it would seem to be the bin Laden son whom U.S. officials said was killed in the raid.

The other two deceased men in the photographs appear to be the brothers who lived with bin Laden at the compound (photograph one and two). According to U.S. officials, one of the brothers was bin Laden's courier, who went in al Qaeda circles by the nom de guerre of Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti. Neighbors in Abbottabad have told reporters that the two men used the names Arshad and Tareq Khan locally, and had lived in the fortified compound, nearby an elite Pakistani military officers' academy and some thirty-five miles from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, since 2005.

The U.S. Navy SEAL team took the body of bin Laden with them, and later buried it in the North Arabian Sea, White House officials said.

Not released in this batch of photos, but presumably for sale by the Pakistani security official as well (and seemingly more potentially controversial): photos of the adult female who was killed in the raid, who is now believed to have been the wife of the courier or his brother.

White House officials initially said Monday that they thought the woman killed in the raid was bin Laden's wife. But they later corrected that account, to say that bin Laden's wife was shot in the leg during the forty-minute raid but survived, and was left on the scene with several other women and children. The woman killed in the raid died in cross-fire on the compound's first floor, while bin Laden and his family occupied the compound's second and third floors, U.S. officials said.

The White House did not provide immediate comment on the photos' release, or on their provenance from a Pakistani security official.

(Reuters)