Pakistani blogger ‘tweets’ live update on bin Laden’s attack
A Pakistani IT consultant "taking a break from the rat race by hiding in the mountains" unwittingly posted a stream real-time updates on Twitter of the attack at Osama bin Laden's mansion in city of Abbottabad without realizing it was a well-planned raid by U.S. forces against the world's most wanted terrorist.
Sohaib Athar, who tweets under the name "ReallyVirtual," tweeted about helicopter movements, firefights and blasts and began his message over his annoyance over choppers noisily hovering over in an unholy hour.
Athar tweeted, "Go away helicopter, before I take out my giant swatter," at the San Francisco based microblogging service.
Then he reported his window rattling and a bang. "I hope it's not the start of something nasty," he tweeted.
He then followed it up with a series of tweets detailing the explosions and the firefights he had heard and told. Most of his tweets talked about ear-shattering blasts, a helicopter crash, a family dying, and then soldiers cordoning off part of the neighborhood and searching door-to-door.
However, he later realized that what he was tweeting was a live military operations by the U.S. military against bin Laden when he heard on the news that U.S. President Barack Obama has announced the death of the terrorist in a surgical strike at a mansion in Abbottabad.
"There goes the neighborhood," Athar tweeted. "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who live-blogged the Osama raid without knowing it."
More from IBT Markets:
Newsletter: To receive Global Markets update, sign up here