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Abbottabad resident unknowingly live tweets Osama raid

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Abbottabad resident unknowingly live tweets Osama raid

3News NZ

Sohaib Athar, aka @ReallyVirtual

Sohaib Athar, aka @ReallyVirtual

Abbottabad resident Sohaib Athar has found overnight fame after accidentally live tweeting the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Describing himself as an "IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops", Mr Athar first joked about the helicopter flying above the town, saying he'd get out his 'giant swatter'.

Jokes soon turned to horror, when he realised something serious was going down. Horror then turned to annoyance, once the media got a hold of his story.

Here's a selection of his tweets from last night and this morning, beginning with the earliest. Find him on Twitter at @ReallyVirtual.

*******

Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1am (is a rare event).

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 http://bit.ly/ljB6p6 seems like my giant swatter worked !

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

All silent after the blast, but a friend heard it 6km away too ... the helicopter is gone too.

Seems like my giant swatter worked!

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

Funny, moving to Abbottabad was part of the 'being safe' strategy.

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

@raihak yep, the mad power cuts have reached abbottabad - 14 hours daily - luckily I have a generator AND a UPS at the coffee shop

@tahirakram yea. *hides his giant swatter*

@kashaziz technically, it is unidentified until identified, and it is a flying object, so year, why the hell not, we have seen weirder stuff

@tahirakram they're not saying anything

The abbottabad helicopter/UFO was shot down near the Bilal Town area, and there's report of a flash. People saying it could be a drone.

It was too noisy to be a spy craft, or, a very poor spy craft it was.

Two helicpoters, one down, could actually be the training accident scenario they're saying it was >> http://bit.ly/ioGE6O

The Pakistan Army confirms a foreign helicopter crashed.

And now I feel I must apologize to the pilot about the swatter tweets.

And now, a plane flying over Abbottabad...

I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected.

Report from a taxi driver: The army has cordoned off the crash area and is conducting door-to-door search in the surrounding.

@kursed What really happened doesn't matter if there is an official story behind it that 99.999 per cent of the world would believe.

@kursed Another rumor: two copters that followed the crashed one were foreign Cobras - and got away

@ahmedbilal @kursed Sadly. We should start learning how to spread believable stories and recreate a reality that suits us.
@kursed True, but stranger things have happened. I just hope they don't find my giant helicopter swatter. Must hide it :-/

@kursed  Well, there were at least two copters last night, I heard one but a friend heard two, for 15-20 minutes.

@kursed I think I should take out my big blower to blow the fog of war away and see the clearer picture.

I guess Abbottabad is going to get as crowded as the Lahore that I left behind for some peace and quiet. 'sigh'.

RT @ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan.: ISI has confirmed it << Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/

Wondering what would be the right music to play in the coffee shop today...

I guess I should unsubscribe from the #abbottabad search on twitter before it kills my machine. Leave Abbottabad alone, Osama and Obama...

RT @kryanth How long before the "Call of Duty: Abbottabad, Pakistan" expansion hits the stores?

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

and here come the mails from the mainstream media... *sigh*

Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now.

Fact: I don't own a TV set and stopped watching TV many years ago. Sorry three-lettered-big-tv-news-channels for not replying to your emails

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Comments

4/05/2011 9:31:22 p.m.

Gordon McShean wrote:

Is New Zealand at risk of being equated with Pakistan by political analysts for sheltering former terrorists? Should American and British intelligence forces be concerned that a Scottish Republican Army terrorist lives here, in a clandestine compound a short distance from a NZ military establishment? Both of these radicals hoped to promote their causes. Bin Laden maintained his notoriety by issuing an occasional video reminder of his "9/11" involvement. Our Scot - who once gave Scottish nationalists a bad name by his involvement in a raid on an armoury in the year of the Queen's Coronation, has recently broken his silence; his story, RETIRED TERRORIST, has been published.It tells of his lifelong exile - to Germany, the US and NZ - and then taking up his current refuge. This week Bin Laden faced death without even a protective pocket knife. Our Scottish stirrer had bravely led the raid carrying only a starter pistol. The comparisons are graphic. Can New Zealand learn from this and determine a truly neutral civil defence policy, holding major "intelligence" forces at bay, telling Americans to keep their SEALS fastened ? Perhaps we should be keeping an eye open for Pakistan's subsequent responses (remembering that they have The Bomb!). Home rule for Scotland!

3/05/2011 12:26:33 p.m.

Mark Wgtn wrote:

That is just hilarious. I like this guy. "Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now"