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The Navy SEAL team that raided a Pakistan compound and killed Osama Bin Laden was headquartered in Virginia, NBC News reported Tuesday.

Navy SEAL Team Six is part of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group based just outside Virginia Beach. Their moniker: "the quiet professionals."

The undercover unit, partially based in the small community of Dam Neck, Va., is shrouded in secrecy for obvious reasons. Still, Virginia leaders are looking to express their gratitude.

"This community is extremely proud," Virginia Beach mayor Will Sessoms told the Washington Post Monday. "I'd like to come up with a way to have a city celebration of some kind . . . But it's challenging."

"As Virginians were hit at the Pentagon on 9-11 & USS Cole, it is appropriate that a VA-based SEAL Team brought justice directly to Osama," Virginia Senate candidate George Allen tweeted Monday. "The death of bin Laden is welcomed news for all Americans and people around the world who share our values of freedom."

Virginians joined other Americans across the country in celebrating Bin Laden's death. Gary Ruebush of Harrisonburg, Va., waved an American flag to Interstate 81 drivers on the Lance Corporal Daniel Scott Resner Bubb Memorial Bridge, which was named after his nephew, who died in Iraq serving in the military.

The only information about what occurred inside the compound has come from American officials, much of it provided under condition of anonymity.

They said SEALs dropped down ropes from helicopters, killed bin Laden aides and made their way to the main building. President Barak Obama and his national security team monitored the strike, watching and listening nervously and in near silence from the Situation Room as it all unfolded.

"The minutes passed like days," White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan said.

U.S. officials said the information that ultimately led to bin Laden's capture originally came from detainees held in secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe. There, agency interrogators were told of an alias used by a courier whom bin Laden particularly trusted.

It took four long years to learn the man's real name, then years more before investigators got a big break in the case, these officials said. Sometime in mid-2010, the man was overheard using a phone by intelligence officials, who then were able to locate his residence, the specially constructed $1 million compound with walls as high as 18 feet topped with barbed wire.

U.S. counterterrorism officials considered bombing the place, an option that was discarded by the White House as too risky, particularly if it turned out bin Laden was not there.

Instead, Obama signed an order on Friday for the team of SEALs to chopper onto the compound under the cover of darkness.

One of bin Laden's sons, Khalid, was also killed in the raid, Brennan said. Bin Laden's wife was shot in the calf but survived, a U.S. official said. Also killed were the courier, another al-Qaida facilitator and an unidentified woman, officials said.

Some people found at the compound were left behind when the SEALs withdrew and were turned over to Pakistani authorities who quickly took over control of the site, officials said. They identified the trusted courier as Kuwaiti-born Sheikh Abu Ahmed, who had been known under the name Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

Within 40 minutes, the operation was over, and the SEALs flew out minus one helicopter, which had malfunctioned and had to be destroyed. Bin Laden's remains were flown to the USS Carl Vinson, then lowered into the North Arabian Sea.

Brennan said the U.S. already was scouring items seized in the raid said to include hard drives, DVDs, documents and more that might tip U.S. intelligence to al-Qaida's operational details and perhaps lead the manhunt to the presumed next-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Bin Laden's death came 15 years after he declared war on the United States. Al-Qaida was also blamed for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors in Yemen, as well as countless other plots, some successful and some foiled.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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