the pictures show the house engulfed in flames after a 40-minute battle in which four others were report lid killed. cnn s john king joined wolf blitzer to show us step by step how and where the operation went down. how many times over the last ten years have they told us, no, osama bin laden is here in afghanistan. how many times did afghanistan tell us he was here in the mountainous regions. let s take a closer look as we measure it out and zoom in. where was he? about 120 miles eefrt of the border. so often it whitemud said he was hiding here. instead 120 miles to the east. let s take a look at this town abbottabad. you see somewhere in the ballpark of a million people. you see it s pretty highly
neighbor. is it plausible with all the military installations nearby that the pakistani government would have no idea that osama bin laden was living in that compound? it was a very accessible place and a very important place in some ways. when i spoke to residents in abbottabad, and i asked them if they thought it could actually be plausible that he could have been here without the knowledge of pakistani authorities, some would either resort to conspiracy theories or given what the pakistani intelligence agencies claim about themselves and the power of them throughout the entire country, it didn t seem too credible to them at all. omar, thanks for your help. reporter: thank you. and here s the satellite image, this is of 2009 of the town omar was just describing. you can see it s a pretty sprawling town. that is the town from above.
right in here that they drew up the plans and made the plans to go in for this amazing, bold raid. you have and you will hear, this could be a little bit confusing, u.s. officials called the town abbottabad, journalist from around the world are making their way there now. omar, let me just begin with my biggest question, did anybody in this town have any idea the man living in that giant compound was osama bin laden? reporter: it seems not, whoever i spoke to today said they did not know, they found out later in the morning. at first they were startled by the sounds of low flying helicopters, this is a place that actually sees very little action at all. it s a very sleepy garris son