Osama bin Laden, the founder and leader of al-Qaeda and the man behind the September 11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, is dead. He was killed in a nighttime raid by a team of U.S. Navy SEALs at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan — a military garrison city barely 35 miles from Islamabad.

President Obama announced the news in a late-night address to the nation, describing the operation as the result of years of intelligence work that had finally located bin Laden's hiding place. The compound, by all accounts, was large, heavily fortified, and conspicuous — a structure that stood out sharply in an otherwise modest neighborhood, and one that Pakistani authorities have so far struggled to explain they did not know about.

The raid lasted approximately 40 minutes. Bin Laden was shot and killed during a firefight. His body was recovered, identified through DNA comparison, and subsequently buried at sea in accordance with Islamic tradition, with the stated purpose of preventing his grave from becoming a shrine.

The news triggered spontaneous celebrations in the United States — crowds gathering outside the White House, at Ground Zero in New York, and in cities across the country. For many Americans, the moment carried a weight that was personal as well as political: the conclusion, nearly a decade in the making, of a pursuit that began in the rubble of September 11.

The strategic implications are harder to assess. Al-Qaeda has been weakened over the years by drone strikes and the deaths of senior operatives, but it has also decentralized in ways that make it less dependent on any individual leader. The organization will continue. But the symbolic significance of bin Laden's death — the closure it represents for those who lost people on September 11 — is real and should not be diminished.