US President Donald Trump has praised the US Navy SEALs, saying that history will never forget it was this special American force that stormed into al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan and "put a bullet in his head". Trump also repeated his claim that a year before al-Qaeda terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre twin towers in September 2001, he had warned about bin Laden.

"History will never forget that it was the SEALs who stormed the compound (of) Osama bin Laden and put a bullet in his head," Trump said in a speech at Norfolk, Virginia, on Sunday during a special celebration to mark the US Navy's 250th birthday.

Trump said that he had asked authorities to keep track of bin Laden a year before the 9/11 attack, and went on to add that the "fake news would never let me get away with that statement unless it was true".

"Please remember I wrote about Osama bin Laden exactly one year before he blew up the World Trade Centre. And I said, 'You got to watch Osama bin Laden'," he said. "But I said one year before. that I saw somebody named Osama bin Laden and I didn't like it. And you got to take care of him."   

"They didn't do it. A year later, he blew up the World Trade Centre," the US president said. "So (I) got to take a little credit, because nobody else is going to give it to me. You know the old story, they don't give you credit. Just take it yourself."  

Trump said that it was the US Navy that "dumped" bin Laden's "wretched corpse off the decks" of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson "to sink into the dark abyss". 

In May 2011, US Navy Seals carried out an operation that killed bin Laden, who was hiding in a house in Abbottabad, Pakistan.