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The founder and spiritual figurehead for al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, is dead.

President Barack Obama said in an address from the White House that a small team of Americans carried out the operation to kill bin Laden in Pakistan, and that cooperation from Pakistani authorities was crucial.

"Shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda," Mr. Obama said. "Tonight, we can say to those who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda's terror, justice has been done."

Mr. Obama chaired no fewer than five National Security Council meetings meeting on the pursuit of bin Laden, CBS News has learned, and gave the order to plan an attack on his suspected compound on the morning of April 29. He gave final order for the attack Sunday morning, which he described in his speech as resulting in a "firefight" in which no U.S. personnel were harmed.

U.S. officials said the helicopter raid in Pakistan was carried out by CIA paramilitaries together with the elite Navy SEAL Team Six. The U.S. team took custody of bin Laden's remains, which American officials said were being handled in accordance with Islamic tradition.

Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight.

The president called the killing of bin Laden the "most significant achievement to date" in the effort to defeat al Qaeda.

"Justice has been done," Obama said.

Bin Laden was located at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was monitored and when the time was determined to be right, the president said, he authorized a "targeted operation."

"A small team of Americans carried out the operation," Obama said. "After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

DNA testing confirmed that it was bin Laden, sources told ABC News.

Obama said tonight that he was briefed last August on a possible but "far from certain" lead to bin Laden, but it took many months for the intelligence community to "run this thread to ground."

"I met repeatedly with my National Security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located Bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside Pakistan," the president said.

"Finally, last week I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action and authorized an operation to get Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice," he said.

Sources said the attack was carried out by Joint Special Operations Command forces working with the CIA.