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| India-Pakistan |
| This must be the 21st century: Pakistani IT consultant liveblogs the raid on Twitter |
| 2011-05-02 |
| Bonnie Malkin, The Telegraph (UK) Sohaib Athar, who uses the Twitter handle "ReallyVirtual", recorded the helicopter attack that led to the death of the al-Qaeda leader. At 1am local time, he noted on his Twitter page that a helicopter was hovering overhead, a "rare event" in sleepy Abbottabad. The noise from the aircraft was annoying, and he tweeted: "Go away helicopter – before I take out my giant swatter :-/". But the commotion only got worse. Minutes later he wrote: "A huge window shaking bang here in Abbottabad Cantt. I hope its not the start of something nasty :-S" Then, when the sound of the helicopter stopped following an explosion, he tweeted "seems like my giant swatter worked !".... Shortly later he went offline for a few hours, returning in the morning to work out what had happened. He retweeted a post from Munzir Naqvi: "I think the helicopter crash in Abbottabad, Pakistan and the President Obama breaking news address are connected." Soon another Twitter user had confirmed the news. Mr Athar tweeted "RT @ ISuckBigTime: Osama Bin Laden killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan. ISI has confirmed it [[ Uh oh, there goes the neighborhood :-/"". Mr Athar describes himself as "an IT consultant taking a break from the rat-race by hiding in the mountains with his laptops." But his peace and quiet was not to last. During the morning he acknowledged: "Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."... |
| Posted by:Mike |