“It will be a step toward supporting international efforts to combat terror and dismantle Al-Qaeda cells, apart from wiping out the deviant thought fueling it. With their crimes such as the murders of innocent people threatening the security and stability of society, the Saudi people have been the major targets of the terror organization,” an official source told the Saudi Press Agency.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the death of Bin Laden "a watershed moment" in the global fight against terrorism. "Personally, I am very much relieved by the news that justice has been done to such a mastermind of international terrorism," the secretary-general said.

Most Arabs saw him as a "pillar of evil" whose deadly attacks on the United States unleashed a backlash against Muslims across the world.

The Palestinian Authority welcomed his killing as "good for the cause of peace."

Some said the killing of Bin Laden had little relevance to an Arab world fired by popular revolt against oppression. "Bin Laden is just a bad memory," said Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch in Beirut. "The region has moved way beyond that, with massive broad-based upheavals that are game-changers."

Egyptian Karim Shafei, 37, head of a real estate firm, said: "A lot of the sympathy toward Bin Laden from the Middle East in the past came from the fact that people were oppressed. The removal of their dictators could signal a greater move away from radicalism or symbols of radicalism."

Al-Qaeda's indiscriminate violence never seemed to galvanize the Arab masses. On the contrary, it generated anger at Muslim casualties of suicide bombings in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and elsewhere.

Many believe Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda brought catastrophe on the Muslim world as the United States retaliated with two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the word "Islam" became associated with "terrorism."

"The damage Bin Laden caused Islam is appalling and a collective shame," said Mahmoud Sabbagh, a Saudi, on Twitter.

Ahmed Saleh, a 58-year-old retired Palestinian, said: "The world is better without Bin Laden. It has removed a pillar of evil from the world. His heinous actions were exploited to allow hostile policies toward the Arabs and Muslims."

In Yemen, Bin Laden's ancestral home, some believed his death would cause his group to lose heart. "Al-Qaeda is finished without Bin Laden. Al-Qaeda members will not be able to continue," said Ali Mubarak, a Yemeni man in his 50s as he sipped tea in a cafe in Sanaa.

"We hope the killing of Bin Laden will be the beginning of the end of terror," a Yemeni official said, asking not to be identified. A formal statement from the Sanaa government called the elimination of Bin Laden a "monumental milestone in the ongoing global war against terrorism."