Osama bin Laden's compound, known locally as the Waziristan Haveli (Urdu: وزیرستان حویلی, romanized: Wazīristān Havelī, lit.

Completed in 2005, the main buildings in the compound lay on a 3,500-square-metre (38,000 sq ft) plot of land, much larger than those of nearby houses.

The house itself did not stand out architecturally from others in the neighbourhood, except for its size and exaggerated security measures; for example, the third-floor balcony had a 2.13-metre (7 ft) privacy wall.

During a raid on 2 May 2011, 24 members of the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group arrived by helicopter, breached a wall using explosives, and entered the compound in search of bin Laden.

[6] Associated Press identified the owner as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who purchased the vacant land for the complex in 2004 and four adjoining lots between 2004 and 2005 for the equivalent of US$48,000.

[7] Constructed between 2003 and 2005, the three-story structure[8] was located on a dirt road[9] four kilometres (2+1⁄2 mi) northeast of the city centre of Abbottābad.

[citation needed] On a plot of land much larger than those of nearby houses, it was surrounded by 5.5-metre (18 ft)[11][13] concrete walls topped with barbed wire.

One of the first floor rooms was furnished with a whiteboard, markers and textbooks, to serve as a classroom for the children in the house, who were home-schooled in Arabic.

[20] The food found at the house by the Pakistani authorities was basic, such as dates, nuts, eggs, olive oil and dried meat.

[19] The brothers would visit Rasheed's corner store, about a minute's walk from the house, with young children for whom they bought sweets and soft drinks.

[10][24] In November 2017, the CIA publicly released the contents of a cache of nearly 470,000 computer files (with a total size of 258 gigabytes) discovered on 183 separate devices during the Abbottabad Compound raid (that resulted in Bin Laden's death) by Navy SEALs, giving the world a glimpse into the home life of Bin Laden, his family, and his closest allies.

[35] American intelligence officials discovered bin Laden's whereabouts by tracking one of his couriers, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

Information was collected from Guantánamo Bay detainees who gave intelligence officers al-Kuwaiti's pseudonym and said that he was a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

[40] Prior to moving to the compound, they lived in the village of Chak Shah Muhammad, in the nearby Haripur District, for nearly two and a half years.

[41][42] Osama bin Laden was killed in Waziristan Haveli on 2 May 2011, shortly after 01:00 local time,[43] by the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group.

Days after the raid, police allowed reporters and locals to approach the walls of the compound, but kept the doors sealed shut.

[16][54][55][56][57] In February 2013, Pakistan announced plans to build a R265 million ($2.7m) amusement park in the area, including the property of the former hideout.

Present at some neighbourhood funerals, two men from the compound were "tall, fair skinned and bearded" and self-identified as cousins from elsewhere in the region.