US Pentagon releases new videos of bin Laden

A senior US intelligence official, who released five video clips of bin Laden taken from the compound in Abbottabad, said the information retrieved by US forces represented the largest trove of intelligence ever obtained from a single terrorism suspect.

It was also announced that the compound in Pakistan where US forces killed Osama bin Laden was an "active command and control center" where the al Qaeda leader remained in strategic and operational control of the organization, the official said.

Senior Pakistani security officials said bin Laden may have lived in Pakistan for over seven years before being shot dead by US forces, a disclosure that could further anger key ally Washington over the presence of enemy number one in the country.

One of bin Laden's widows told Pakistani investigators that he stayed in a village for nearly two and a half years before moving to the nearby garrison town of Abbottabad, where he was killed on Monday.

The wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told investigators earlier that bin Laden and his family had spent five years in Abbottabad, where one of the most elaborate and expensive manhunts in history ended.