The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been criticised online for live-tweeting the killing of Osama Bin Laden as it happened five years ago.

It has shared details of the mission and intelligence that led to America's most wanted man being found.

But reaction has been largely negative, with one Twitter user calling the move "grotesque and embarrassing".

Others posted memes and gifs of people rolling their eyes and putting their heads in their hands.

The CIA's other tweets mostly concern historical trivia and artefacts.

The leader of al-Qaeda, who was thought to have ordered the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, was shot dead at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan in May 2011 after evading capture by the US and its allies for nearly a decade.

Speaking on the fifth anniversary of his death, CIA director John Brennan said the United States had destroyed a large part of al-Qaeda.

Bin Laden had a great symbolic and strategic significance, he told CBS, and it was important to remove the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

He said removing the head of the self-styled Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, could have a great impact but added that counter-terrorism agencies were confronting not just an organisation but a phenomenon, and the challenge would continue for many years.

"I think it has had a resonance, unfortunately, that has appealed to the hearts and souls and minds of individuals who have been misled by their narrative of it being a religious banner," he said.

The CIA's tweet announcing its plans to "live-tweet" the raid was favourited more than 2,000 times on Twitter

Some Twitter users thought it was inappropriate.

A few people offered messages of support.