Donald Trump lauds US Navy Seals for putting 'bullet in Osama bin Laden's head', recalls his pre-9/11 'warning'

US President Donald Trump. (File photo)

US President Donald Trump on Sunday lauded the Navy Seals for the killing of al-Qaida leader and 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden, saying that history will never forget those who "put a bullet in his head".

“History will never forget that it was the SEALs who stormed the compound (of) Osama bin Laden and put a bullet in his head. Remember that,” Trump said in a speech at Norfolk, Virginia Sunday during a special celebration to mark the US Navy’s 250th birthday.

The US President also claimed that he had warned against Osama a year before the 2001 terror attack on the twin towers.

Trump said that he had asked authorities to keep track of the dreaded terrorists a year before the 9/11 attack, adding that the "fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true".

"Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year before he blew up the World Trade Center. And I said, ‘You got to watch Osama bin Laden’," he said. "But I said one year before… that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden and I didn't like it. And you got to take care of him."

"They didn't do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Center,” the US president said.

“So got to take a little credit, because nobody else is going to give it to me. You know the old story, they don't give you credit. Just take it yourself." Trump said that it was the US Navy that “dumped” bin Laden’s “wretched corpse off the decks” of aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson "to sink into the dark abyss".

On May 2, 2011, US Navy SEALs from the elite SEAL Team 6 carried out Operation Neptune Spear to kill Osama bin Laden. They carried out a covert raid on a fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where intelligence agencies had tracked the al-Qaeda leader.

After brief but intense combat, bin Laden was shot and killed, along with four others in the compound, ending a decade-long manhunt.

(With inputs from agencies)