20110502
reuters

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Behind a high white wall next to an unpaved road in the Sudanese capital, the two-storey house where Osama bin Laden once lived has remained vacant since the leader of al Qaeda was expelled from Sudan in 1996.

No one wanted to live there after the Saudi-born militant moved out for fear it could become a target. On Monday, America's enemy No. 1 was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in another villa, that one near Islamabad in Pakistan.

"The house has been empty since he left," said a former neighbour to bin Laden, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks which sparked two U.S.-led wars in the region.

"Nobody wanted to live where Osama had lived. Only some foreigners came but left after one month when they had heard Osama had lived here," said the man who, like others, did not want to be named.

Tenants feared Washington might bomb it, he said.

Their concerns may not have been misplaced. Washington had been on a global hunt for bin Laden for 10 years and al Qaeda's leader had drawn down U.S. wrath on Sudan even after he left.

In 1998, the United States fired missiles at El Shifa medicine factory in Khartoum. U.S. officials said it was producing chemical weapons ingredients and was partly owned by bin Laden. Sudan insisted it was only making pharmaceutical drugs.

The attack followed the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Sudan's neighbour Kenya, which killed at least 226 people including 12 Americans. Those attacks were blamed on al Qaeda.