One of Bin Laden’s widows told Pakistani investigators that he stayed in a village for nearly two and a half years before moving to the nearby garrison town of Abbottabad, where he was killed on Monday.

The wife, Amal Ahmed Abdulfattah, told investigators earlier that Bin Laden and his family had spent five years in Abbottabad, where one of the most elaborate and expensive manhunts in history ended.

“Amal (Bin Laden’s wife) told investigators that they lived in a village in Haripur district for nearly two and a half years before moving to Abbottabad at the end of 2005,” one of the security officials told Reuters.

Amal, along with two other wives and several children, were among 15-16 people detained by Pakistani authorities at the compound after the raid.

Pakistan is under heavy pressure to explain how Bin Laden could have spent so many years undetected a few hours drive from its intelligence headquarters in the capital.

Suspicions have deepened that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency may have had ties with Bin Laden — or that at least some of its agents did.

Pakistan has dismissed such suggestions and says it has paid the highest price in human life and money supporting the US war on militancy launched after Bin Laden’s followers staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America.

Security officials said Pakistan had launched an investigation into Bin Laden’s presence in the country seen as critical to stabilizing neighboring Afghanistan.

“It is very serious that Bin Laden lived in cities (in Pakistan)... and we couldn’t nail it down fully,” said one of the officials. Pakistani leaders were already facing staggering problems before revelations that Bin Laden was in their backyard raised new questions about their commitment to fighting militancy.

Some attention may shift to Chak Shah Mohammad, where Bin Laden’s wife said he lived before shifting to his last hideout.

The small village of mostly brick clusters of three or four houses also contains cave-like dwellings previously inhabited by the poor that are now being used to keep animals.

People there, like in other areas, expressed disdain for Pakistan’s powerful military because Bin Laden had spent so much time in Pakistan without being caught or killed.

Such criticism was rare before Bin Laden’s death put Pakistan under the international spotlight.

“It’s a weakness of our rulers, military and intelligence that he (Bin Laden) was in Abbottabad and they didn’t know that,” said Qazi Shaukat Mehmood, who like other residents highly doubts that Bin Laden could have lived in Chak Shah Mohammad unnoticed for any length of time. “I’m here for more than 20 years. I never saw any unusual activity. I don’t believe this is true. It must be some kind of joke.”

That would please Pakistani officials. Anger and suspicion between Washington and Islamabad over the raid in Abbottabad, 50 km from the Pakistani capital, showed no sign of abating.

The New York Times on Saturday quoted Pakistani officials as saying the Obama administration had demanded Pakistan disclose the identities of some of its top intelligence operatives as Washington seeks to find out whether they had contact with Bin Laden or his agents before the raid on his compound.

The officials were providing details of what the Times called a tense discussion between Pakistani officials and a US envoy in Pakistan on Monday. A Pakistani security official denied the report, which he called “malicious.”

Many in Washington suspect Pakistani authorities had been either grossly incompetent or playing a double game in the hunt for Bin Laden and the two countries’ supposed partnership against terror.

As it engages in damage control over Bin Laden’s presence, Pakistan must prepare for the possibility that supporters angered by Bin Laden’s death will hit back.

Since Al-Qaeda has ties with the Pakistani Taleban, this country could make an easy target.

Al-Qaeda has acknowledged that Bin Laden is dead, dispelling doubts by some Muslims the militant group’s leader had really been killed by US forces, and vowed to mount more attacks on the West.

In Washington, a US official said US intelligence had established on-the-ground surveillance in Abbottabad in advance of the raid. A phone call last year to a man known as the main courier to Bin Laden helped lead the CIA to the compound, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

US officials also said among materials found at Bin Laden’s hide-out was evidence indicating Al-Qaeda at one point considered attacking the US rail system on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.