Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden’s first mother-in-law died of a stroke after hearing the news that US forces killed him in Pakistan, a London-based Arabic newspaper reported Sunday. Nabih al-Ghanem, the mother of bin Laden’s first wife, Najwa, was taken to a hospital in Latakia in northern Syria where she died after suffering the stroke, the Asharq Al-Awsat daily said.
It said the woman in her 70s “could not bear the bad news and lost consciousness” after US President Barack Obama announced bin Laden’s killing by US commandos during a raid in Pakistan on May 2. Bin Laden had married Najwa, his Syrian-born cousin, when he was 17, and they had 11 children, the paper said adding she had left Afghanistan a few days before the September 11, 2011 terror attacks on the United States and now lives in Syria.