Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he hopes the world believes that his country is "not the place of terrorism" after the announcement that the al Qaeda leader was killed in neighboring Pakistan.

"If the international troops/forces are true allies of the Afghans - they should come out and say that the killing of Afghans, children and elders which took place over the many years on a daily basis was not a good idea," Karzai said Monday on state television.

Bin Laden eluded capture for years, once reportedly slipping out of a training camp in Afghanistan just hours before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed it.

Prior to masterminding the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, bin Laden had been implicated in a series of deadly, high-profile attacks that had grown in their intensity and success during the 1990s. They included a deadly firefight with U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 in August 1998, and an attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000.

In his speech, Obama reiterated that the United States is not fighting Islam.

"I've made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims," Obama said.