FACTBOX: Who was Osama bin Laden? (Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - here are some facts key on bin Laden, the US authorities, said late Sunday was killed and his body recovered by U.S. authorities. * Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, in 1957, one of the more than 50 children of millionaire construction magnate Mohamed Bin Laden. His first marriage was to a Syrian cousin at the age of 17 years, and it is supposed to have at least 23 children since at least five wives.

* Convinced that Muslims are victims of terrorism conducted by the United States, bin Laden is accused of masterminding a series of attacks against targets U.S. in Africa and the Middle East in the 1990s. His family, who became rich Saudi, disavowed him, construction boom and he was stripped of his Saudi nationality. * He has fought in funded by the U.S. insurgency in the 1980s against Soviet troops in Afghanistan, where he founded al-Qaeda. He returned to Afghanistan in the 1990s, activists Islamists training from across the world in the camps has to work by the Taliban in power. * Tall, Ghent and barbu, Ben Laden was unscathed by the attacks on U.S. missiles on his Afghan camps after the Embassy bombings 1998 U.S. in East Africa. According to some reports, he was almost killed by a U.S. bomb when militants were hunting at the end of 2001 in the mountains of Tora Bora in the East of the Afghanistan. * Bin Laden approved the attacks of 11 September 2001 against the United States where nearly 3,000 people died, said later that the results had exceeded his expectations. With a premium of 25 million U.S. dollars on his head, he then subtracts greatest manhunt in the world for a decade, with tens of thousands of Pakistani and American soldiers in his research.

* In December 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that the United States does not know where bin Laden was hidden and has not had good intelligence on his whereabouts and come over the years.

* More than 60 messages were issued by bin Laden, number two Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda and their allies since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. * In a Sept 2007 video the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, said bin Laden in the United States was vulnerable despite its economic and military power, but there is no specific threat. (Written by Mark Trevelyan and David Cutler, mounting by William Maclean, London editorial reference unit)