President Barack Obama has decided that photos of the dead Osama Bin Laden should not be released. 

US officials had been discussing whether to publish pictures of Bin Laden's body to counter conspiracy theories that he did not die, the BBC reports. 

But Obama believed the images could inflame sensitivities, saying: "We don't trot out this stuff as trophies." 

The al-Qaeda leader was shot dead in a raid on Monday by US special forces in northern Pakistan.  

The BBC's Paul Adams in Washington says that President Obama has clearly decided that releasing the photos is not worth the risk. 

Obama revealed his decision during an interview with CBS television's 60 Minutes programme, the network said in a statement. 

White House spokesman Jay Carney said at a briefing later that Obama believed it was important to make sure that photographs were not "floating around as incitement or as a propaganda tool". 

Carney said the administration had been monitoring world reaction and there was no doubt that al-Qaeda believed Bin Laden was dead. 

He quoted Obama as saying: "There will be some folks who will deny it but you will not see Bin Laden walking on this Earth again." 

Obama's decision contradicted a statement made a day earlier by CIA director Leon Panetta, who said the photos would be released at some stage. 

The decision came as US officials began to comb through computer hard-drives, mobile phones and USB sticks found during the US Navy Seals raid in Abbottabad. 

US Attorney General Eric Holder said Washington expected to add more names to its terrorism watch-list as a result of data seized from the compound. 

Two telephone numbers and 500 euros ($745, £450) were also found stitched into Bin Laden's clothing in case he needed to make a quick getaway. 

Holder said Bin Laden was a lawful military target, whose killing was "an act of national self-defence". 

Critics have raised concerns about the legality of the operation, after the US revised its account to acknowledge Bin Laden was unarmed when shot dead. 

Two couriers and one woman also died in Monday's assault, while one of Bin Laden's wives was injured. The 54-year-old Bin Laden - American's most wanted man - was buried at sea from a US aircraft carrier, say US officials. President Obama, who watched the raid from the White House on monitors, saw his approval rating jump 11 points to 57% in a New York Times/CBS News poll on Wednesday. 

He plans to visit the World Trade Center site in New York on Thursday to remember victims of the 11 September attacks, of which Bin Laden was said to have been the mastermind.  

The Pakistani military has confirmed that it is holding survivors of the US special forces operation. They were being kept at secret locations in the cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, said Pakistan army spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas. Some of the survivors were being treated for bullet wounds that were serious but not life-threatening, he added. The BBC's Aleem Maqbool says the compound where the raid unfolded has now become a sightseers' attraction. There is an ice-cream vendor outside and children selling what they claim is wreckage from a US helicopter, which the Americans said they blew up after it apparently malfunctioned during the operation. The compound in which Bin Laden was killed is just a few hundred metres from the Pakistan Military Academy. A BBC correspondent in Abbottabad says either the Pakistani authorities were incredibly incompetent or were harbouring the al-Qaeda leader. Pakistan earlier rejected US suggestions that Islamabad could not have been trusted in advance with sensitive information about the raid to kill Bin Laden. The head of the Pakistani foreign ministry, Salman Bashir, told the BBC he felt the American comments were "disquieting", adding that the two countries had always co-operated well. 

Bashir said it was reasonable to accept the Americans' violation of Pakistan's sovereignty on this occasion, for such a high value target, although this exception could not become a rule. 

In unusually frank remarks, Panetta told Time magazine: "It was decided that any effort to work with the Pakistanis could jeopardise the mission. They might alert the targets." 

US lawmakers are calling for billions of dollars in aid for Pakistan to be reduced or stopped altogether. Several governments in Europe also say Islamabad has questions to answer about what it knew. 

Bin Laden wives found in compound

One of Osama bin Laden's wives stood between him and U.S. Navy SEAL's as the world's most wanted terrorist was gunned down in an airborne assault on the al-Qaida leader's safehouse deep in Pakistan. He was holed up less than a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the country's military academy and not far from the capital of Islamabad.Details emerged Monday of the life and dramatic death of bin Laden, the day after President Barack Obama made the stunning near-midnight announcement that the al-Qaida leader had been killed.

Obama, while assured bin Laden probably was in the compound, did not know with certainty that the 10-year hunt for the notorious son of a Saudi Arabian construction magnate was at an end until his body was carried to one of four U.S. Special Operations helicopters that had ferried in the American force deep inside Pakistan. One of the craft was damaged on landing and blown up before the return journey to Afghanistan.On Monday the president said the terrorist mastermind's death was "a good day for America."

The administration said DNA testing administered on the body before it was buried at sea from the deck of the USS Carl in the North Arabian Sea confirmed the man killed was indeed bin Laden.

Photo analysis by the CIA, confirmation by a woman believed to be one of bin Laden's wives on site, and matching physical features like bin Laden's height all helped confirmed the identification. White House officials were deciding the merits and appropriateness of releasing a photo of bin Laden's body. He was shot above his left eye, blowing away part of his skull.

"The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden," Obama said, although security officials in the U.S. and around the globe warned against retaliatory al-Qaida attacks.

Obama hailed the pride of those who broke joined overnight celebrations as the stunning news spread around the globe. Crowds celebrated throughout the night outside the White House and at ground zero in Lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers once stood. Obama was planning to visit there Thursday and meet with the families of those killed nearly 10 years ago, an administration official said.

Both Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said cooperation from the Pakistani government had helped lead U.S. forces to the compound where he died. But a cloud of suspicion hangs over Pakistan, where authorities have routinely denied bin Laden was in the country. U.S. officials, however, said the sprawling bin Laden compound, with its elaborate security and high walls, was built in 2005, apparently to serve as the terrorist leader's safe house.

Unanswered is the obvious question of how bin Laden could have gone unnoticed just down the road from the country's equivalent of the U.S. military academy at West Point, New York, in a town swarming with military and intelligence personnel.

"People have been referring to this as hiding in plain sight," Obama's counterterrorism chief John Brennan told reporters Monday. "Clearly, this was something that was considered as a possibility. Pakistan is a large country. We are looking right now at how he was able to hold out there for so long and whether or not there was any type of support system within Pakistan that allowed him to stay there."

violence to quell protests must come to an end now.

The brutal crackdown on protesters continued on Saturday with at least 14 more deaths when security forces fired live ammunition to disperse thousands of mourners attending the funerals of those who died on Friday.

The killings were reported from Daraa and the nearby Houran region.Two Syrian MPs from the protest hub city of Daraa and its top cleric on Saturday told Al Jazeera television they resigned in protest at the bloodshed.

"I announce my resignation from parliament," Khalil Al Rifai, a deputy from the southern city said. The satellite channel said he became the second MP from Daraa to quit after Nasser Al Hariri, who earlier announced his resignation, saying he was frustrated because he could not protect his constituents.

"The authorities must respond to all the demands of the people," the Mufti of Daraa, Shaikh Rizik Abdul Rahim Aba Zeid, said. He said while he was taking part in the funeral of 10 martyrs in the nearby village of Izraa, security forces fired at them without provocation.
Another human rights source stated that 112 people were killed in the Good Friday massacre including 28 from Homs Governorate, 23 from Damascus and the surrounding provinces. Syria's National Organisation for Human Rights said that the death toll from two days of violence in Syria reached 120.
Russia, Germany, Greece and Italy joined the chorus of criticism which includes US President Barack Obama and UN chief Ban Ki-moon, while France increased its pressure.

Russia, the first of Syria's allies to speak out, urged Damascus to accelerate its political reforms, saying Moscow was "concerned by the heightening of tensions and signs of a confrontation that is leading to the suffering of innocent people."
The United States condemned "in the strongest possible terms the use of force by the Syrian government against demonstrators. This outrageous use of violence to quell protests must come to an end now,
A Foreign Ministry statement said Russia viewed Syria as its ‘friend' but added, "We are firmly convinced that only constructive dialogue and accelerated broad-scale political, social and economic reforms outlined by the Syrian leadership can achieve stable and democratic development."