Osama Killed

Osama Killed

Sohaib Athar, an IT consultant, was liveblogging the raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed by the US military. And, for nine hours, he did not even realize he was doing so.

Athar, who describes himself as a 30-ish independent software consultant "taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops," happened to be in Abbottabad, at the time of the raid.

"Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1AM (is a rare event)," Athar, @ReallyVirtual on Twitter, said in his first tweet on the topic.

In his tweets, Athar said he was two or three kilometres away from the shooting that took place. When news broke that bin Laden had been killed, Athar tweeted, "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.

Here are some of his tweets:

"Go away helicopter - before I take out my giant swatter :-/"

"A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S"

"@m0hcin all silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6 km away too... the helicopter is gone too."

"@m0hcin the few people online at this time of the night are saying one of the copters was not Pakistani..."

"OMG :S Bomb Blasts in Abbottabad.. I hope everyone is fine :("

"Since taliban (probably) don't have helicpoters, and since they're saying it was not "ours", so must be a complicated situation #abbottabad"

"Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

"I am JUST a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash. Not many twitter users in Abbottabad, these guys are more into facebook. That's all."