World's most wanted terrorist, Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead, US President Barack Obama announced.

"Tonight, I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Usama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda," US President Obama announced the stunning development during an address to the nation late Sunday night from the White House, as cited by CNN.

Obama has thus confirmed media reports about the death of the world's most wanted terrorist that emerged minutes before his address.

Osama bin Laden's death is putting an end to the worldwide hunt for him that the US has been staging since after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City, and Washington, DC.

Even before September 11, bin Laden was already on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

He had been implicated in a series of deadly, high-profile attacks that had grown in their intensity and success during the 1990s.

They included a deadly firefight with U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 in August 1998, and an attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000.

Bin Laden eluded capture for years, once reportedly slipping out of a training camp in Afghanistan just hours before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed it.

Bin Laden was killed in a military operation in Pakistan that U.S. President Barack Obama ordered on Sunday.

Obama said he was told last August that the United States had developed a possible lead on bin Laden - intelligence on bin Laden hiding in a compound in Pakistan. Obama said he determined last week that the United States had actionable intelligence.

"Today at my direction, the United States directed a targeted operation against that compound," Obama said.

Bin Laden was killed after a firefight, and forces took custody of his body, the president said. No Americans were harmed, Obama said.

The announcement comes nearly a decade after the 2001 terror attacks which triggered the Afghanistan war and started a tireless hunt for the terrorist mastermind and Al Qaeda leader.

Fox news reminds that in recent years, that hunt had increasingly led U.S. intelligence across the border and into Pakistan, where Al Qaeda is thought to be concentrated.

In light of bin Laden's death, authorities around the world are being urged to take security precautions. One source said officials are concerned bin Laden's death could incite violence or terrorist acts against U.S. personnel overseas.

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