'Pakistan had no prior knowledge of Bin Laden'

Pakistan on Thursday denied it had any prior knowledge of the whereabouts of Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin laden, who was killed in a US raid at a high-walled mansion in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa garrison township of Abbottabad in 2011.

"Pakistan did not know about the presence of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad," declared Foreign Office spokesman Qazi Khalilullah at a news briefing in Islamabad, Dawn reported.

The Pakistani assertion came in the wake of American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh writing earlier this week that Pakistan had prior knowledge of the US raid that took Osama bin Laden out in Abbottabad.

Seymour Hersh maintained that the US got to Osama bin Laden with Pakistan's help, but later disclosed the operation in a manner that made the country look like a villain.

"They helped. They totally helped. They helped a great deal," said Hersh when he was asked if he believed Pakistan helped the US reach the Al Qaeda leader.

In a story published in the London Review of Books on Sunday, Hersh described the official US version of the so-called "Operation Neptune Spear" as a work of fiction, a fairy-tale.

The White House on Monday, however, also rejected what it referred to as a "baseless" report, as well as Hersh's assertion that the CIA and other US agencies collaborated with the Pakistani military to kill bin Laden.