The US Navy Seals were ready to mount an operation inside Pakistan, similar to the covert raid that killed Osama bin laden, if it failed to act decisively on a US tip-off to rescue a Canadian-American family abducted by the Haqqani network in 2012, according to a media report.
The whereabouts of the hostages were located by a CIA drone in a remote valley in northwest Pakistan last month. The grainy images - captured by the drone - of a young woman and children in a militant camp were a "breakthrough", The New York Times reported, citing senior American officials.
Caitlan Coleman, an American citizen, and her husband Joshua Boyle, a Canadian citizen, were kidnapped in 2012 in Afghanistan while on a backpacking trip.
Coleman, 31, was pregnant at the time of abduction. All the three children were born in captivity.