US senator Jim Inhofe describes seeing 'gruesome' pictures of dead Osama bin Laden.

Jim Inhofe said on Thursday he had no doubt Osama bin Laden was dead after viewing pictures of the terror leader's body.

The CIA has begun showing the photographs to some US lawmakers after President Barack Obama said they were too gruesome to be released to the public.

Inhofe, a Republican, said he was shown 15 photographs taken after Bin Laden was killed on May 2 in a US commando raid - 12 photos from the Pakistani compound and three from the ship where they buried him at sea.

"Yeah, they are gruesome because they were taken right after the incident," Mr Inhofe said on FOX News.

He also denied reports Bin Laden's skull was partially gone.

"It appeared that way at first," Inhofe said. "Then when you saw the other pictures later, you could tell it wasn't that way.

"Now, what happened was if the bullet went into the eye socket, then it was an explosive, it detonated once it was in so that caused the brain to come back out of the eye socket. That's what made it look so gruesome."

In deciding not to release the pictures to the public, the White House expressed fear that they would inflame sentiment in the Middle East and be used as a propaganda tool against the US.

Inhofe said he still believed that those taken aboard the USS Carl Vinson - where Bin Laden's body had been washed and prepared for burial - should be released.

"I really wanted to do it so I could say 'yes I have seen it' and to allay any of these concerns that perhaps he was not dead," he said of accepting the CIA's offer to show the Bin Laden pictures to certain lawmakers. "He is dead. He is gone."