Hamza bin Laden, the youngest son of Osama bin Laden, may have escaped capture during the Navy Seals raid that killed the al-Qaeda leader.
Pakistani security officials believe a member of the bin Laden household has disappeared since the raid, further deepening the confusion about who was killed.
It is understood that three of bin Laden’s widows, currently in Pakistani custody, have told interrogators that one son has not been seen since the operation.
The fresh details raise fears that the al-Qaeda leader’s youngest son and closest confidant, Hamza, may have escaped capture.
The White House initially claimed that Hamza, 20, had been killed at the house in Abbottabad, about 30 miles from Islamabad. Officials later said his 22-year-old brother Khalid had been killed instead.
On Tuesday night an intelligence source in Islamabad told The Daily Telegraph that shifting accounts of what had happened, coupled with the widows’ testimony, left them unable to account for one person who they believe had been living at the house.
“We don’t know if it was his son. Someone, one person may have been in the compound that we now cannot account for if - we believe what we are being told,” he said.
Bin Laden, who was married five times, had as many as 24 children.
No-one knows for certain who was in the compound where bin Laden had lived, hidden in plain sight, for five years.
However, Hamza’s mother is believed to be among the family members in Pakistani custody.
Hamza, thought to be the youngest of the Saudi-born warlord's sons, has been described as the “crown prince of terror”. He featured on an extremist website to mark the third anniversary of the July 7 London bombings in which 52 people died. He read a poem called for “destruction” of America, Britain, France and Denmark.
Intelligence agencies believe he was being groomed as a possible future leader on al-Qaeda.
He was implicated in the assassination of moderate Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto in 2007.
