The will is among a trove of documents released to US media. It was seized in the US assault in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

Bin Laden urged his family to "obey my will" and to spend his inheritance on "jihad, for the sake of Allah".He referred to the money as being in Sudan, but it is not clear whether it was cash or assets.Bin Laden lived in Sudan for five years in the 1990s as a guest of the Sudanese government.

It is not known whether any of the money made its way to his heirs.

Other letters attributed to Bin Laden and released on Tuesday show that he:

• Urged Americans to fight "catastrophic" climate change to "save humanity"
• Feared that a dentist had planted a tracking device in his wife's tooth
• Planned a major media campaign to mark the 10th anniversary of the 11 September attacks in the US
• He also gave his assessment of the progress of the West's "war on terror" and the US military campaign in Afghanistan.

"They thought that the war would be easy and that they would accomplish their objectives in a few days or a few weeks," he wrote."We need to be patient a bit longer. With patience, there is victory!"

Bin Laden was killed by US special forces in May 2011 in a raid on his compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan.

he group has since been led by al-Qaeda's former second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri.