A timeline of Osama bin Laden's life history, from birth, to terrorist leader, to his death in a compound in Pakistan.
1957: Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, one of some 54 children born to Mohammad bin Laden, a building tycoon. His mother was of Syrian origin.
1969: Mohammed bin Laden dies in a helicopter crash. Osama, then aged around 11, is believed to have inherited $80 million.
1984: Bin Laden travels to Afghanistan, responding to calls for a jihad, or holy Islamic war, against the Soviet occupying force. There, he finances and takes command of a force of some 20,000 Islamic fighters recruited from around the world.
1988: Bin Laden founded his group Al-Qaeda (the base).
1989: The Soviet Union withdraws its forces from Afghanistan.
1991: A US-led alliance launches a war to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which Iraq had occupied the previous year. Bin Laden declares jihad against the United States because it has based forces in his native Saudi Arabia, where Islam's two most holy places are located.
1992: Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia, but his support for violent Islamic extremist groups in Egypt and Algeria leads his home country to his explusion and the cancellation of his passport.
1993: An explosion in the basement of the World Trade Center in New York kills six people and injures around 1,000. The attack is later blamed on Al-Qaeda.
1995: A bomb kills US military advisors to Saudi national guard. Five US soldiers killed and more than 60 people are injured.
1996: A truck loaded with explosives destroys a building at the US military base of Khobar in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen US nationals are killed and 386 are wounded. Sudan forces Bin Laden to leave and he resurfaces in Afghanistan where the Taliban movement has just seized Kabul.
1998: Near-simultaneous bomb attacks against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam kill 224 people, most of them Africans, and injure thousands. The US retaliates Bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan and Sudan with cruise missiles, killing at least 20 people.
1999: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation places bin Laden on its "10 most wanted" list.
2000: A suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen kills 17 US Marines and wounds 38. The attack is attributed to Al-Qaeda.
2001: Two hijacked US airliners crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, which subsequently collapse. A third hijacked plane crashes into the Pentagon outside Washington and a fourth in rural Pennsylvania. The attacks kill around 3,000 people. Washington offers a $25-million-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of bin Laden. US-led strikes on Afghanistan begin, aimed at forcing the ruling Taliban to hand over Bin Laden. Bin Laden vows no peace for the US and its citizens in a message broadcast via the Al-Jazeera television network. While not explicitly claiming responsibility for the attacks, he praises those who carried them out.
2002: Bin Laden is variously reported to be in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan - or dead.
2003: Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf says bin Laden is probably alive and hiding in Afghanistan, but claims al-Qaeda is no longer an effective terrorist organisation.
2003: Bin Laden releases a series of statements including comments on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats of more attacks, and offers of a truce with the United States.
2004: "I present a reconciliation initiative... to stop operations against all (European) countries if they promise not to be aggressive towards Muslims." (Al-Arabiya audiotape)
2008: Warns Europe of a "reckoning" after controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammed published.
2010: Claims botched Christmas Day bombing of US airliner and threatens more strikes on US targets. Last message blames industrial nations for climate change and the United States for refusing to sign up to the Kyoto protocol, while urging a US dollar boycott.
2011: Bin Laden is killed in a firefight with covert US forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, northeast of the capital Islamabad, Obama announces in a televised address.
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