Pennsylvania crash site visitors hail bin Laden death

Grant Woolacott (L) and his mother Dallas, of West Hartford, Connecticut, place letters to each of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 at the Flight 93 Temporary Memorial outside Shanksville, Pennsylvania, September 11, 2007.

SHANKSVILLE, Pa (Reuters) - Visitors to a muddy hillside overlooking where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed nearly ten years ago, solemnly hailed on Monday the military's "relentless pursuit of justice" in killing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Under cloudy skies, about 200 people stopped by at midday above the field, where giant earth moving machines made way for a permanent memorial to the crew and passengers who died there on September 11, 2001.

The plane was one of the four commercial airliners hijacked and crashed on that day. Many believe it was headed for the U.S. Capitol building in Washington but went down in a Pennsylvania field after a struggle between passengers and the hijackers over control of the aircraft.

News of bin Laden's killing brought quiet relief to those who stopped at the corrugated steel temporary memorial that will be replaced when the permanent site opens this fall.

"It's good that we got him, that he didn't die of old age," said Brandon Conner, 29, of Lake Charles, Louisiana. "We got to keep after them (al Qaeda)...If we don't fight them over there, we end up fighting them here."

Kip Mack, an electrician on his lunch break at the memorial construction site, said he was happy to hear of bin Laden's demise.

"(It's been a) relentless pursuit of justice," said Mack, 44, of Clyde, Pennsylvania. "I'm proud of our troops."

Separating visitors from the construction site was a chain link fence, where a man wearing American flags as a bandana on his head and as a sash across his body held a large sign reading, "I did not forget." Many people accepted his invitation to add their names. The wrote on the sign leaning against the fence decorated with small American flags and newspapers whose headlines cheered bin Laden's death.

Park superintendent Keith Newlin said the crowd gathered at the remote site was at least triple the number who usually come each day, and he expected the higher numbers to persist throughout the day.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Greg McCune)