Osama has gone 'deep underground', says Obama

The relentless counter terrorism operation in the Af-Pak region has forced Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy to go "deep underground", President Barack Obama said, but warned that the US needs to be alert.

"One of the things that we've been very successful at over the last two years is to ramp up the pressure on Al Qaeda and their key leaders," Obama said on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. "As a consequence, they have been holed up in ways that have made it harder for them to operate," he said. "And part of what's happened is, is bin Laden has gone deep underground. Even Zawahiri, who is more often out there, has been much more cautious," Obama said.

He said capturing or killing Bin Laden and Zawahiri would be extremely important to our national security. "It doesn't solve all our problems, but it remains a high priority of this administration," Obama told reporters at a White House news conference. The President acknowledged that even more than eight years of war against terrorism, Americans are not secure and the US needs to be alert. "I think that, in this day and age, there is always going to be the potential for

an individual or a small group of individuals, if they are willing to die, to kill other people," he said, adding "Some of them are going to be very well organized, and some of them are going to be random. That threat is there".

"It's important, I think, for the American people to understand and not to live in fear; it's just a reality of today's world that there are going to be threats out there,"he said. The president said US has "greatly improved" the homeland security since 9/11 attacks. He also warned against overreacting in the face of the threat of terrorism. He underlined the need to understand that America's strength in part comes from its resilience. It is important, he said, "we don't start losing who we are or overreacting if, in fact, there is the threat of terrorism out there".

"We go about our business. We are tougher than them. Our families and our businesses and our churches and mosques and synagogues and our Constitution and our values, that's what gives us strength," he noted. "We are going to have this problem out there for a long time to come, but it doesn't have to completely distort us, and it doesn't have to dominate our foreign policy. What we can do is to constantly fight against it," Obama said.