Afghan Taliban reject reports Mullah Omar killed

KABUL: The Taliban in Afghanistan rejected on Monday as “propaganda” unsourced media reports that its reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been killed in Pakistan, saying he is alive and in Afghanistan.
Security officials in Pakistan and diplomats, US military commanders and government officials in Afghanistan all cast doubt on reports that Omar, one of the most-wanted men in the world, had been killed while travelling between Quetta and North Waziristan in Pakistan.
“He is in Afghanistan safe and sound,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location. “We strongly reject these baseless allegations that Mullah Mohammad Omar has been killed.”
“This is the propaganda by the enemy to weaken the morale of fighters,” Mujahid said.
The heavily bearded, one-eyed Omar is rarely seen in public and fled with the rest of the Afghan leadership to the Pakistan town of Quetta after their government was toppled by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, where they formed the “Quetta shura”. A shura is a leadership council.
The Taliban were toppled for refusing to hand over al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked airliner attacks on the United States.
Bin Laden was killed by a US Navy SEAL team in a garrison town not far from the Pakistan capital, Islamabad, in the early hours of May 2, ending a search that had dragged on for more than 10 years.
Bin Laden’s killing came as a blow to an already splintered al Qaeda but its effect on loosely allied groups like the Afghan and Pakistan Taliban movements has been less clear.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban have already vowed to step up attacks as part of their long-awaited “spring offensive”, and violence has spiked with a series of assaults on major targets in recent days.
A senior Pakistani security official said he could not confirm media reports, including on Afghanistan’s private TV station TOLO, that Omar had been killed by members of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) spy agency.
According to one media report, a former ISI chief Hamid Gul had been moving Omar from Quetta to North Waziristan when Omar was killed, although Gul denied the report.
“I am in Muree with my wife and I have no involvement in this, whether he is dead or alive,” Gul told Reuters by telephone from a hill town north of the Pakistani capital.
“We don’t know if he is dead or not. My sense is he is alive.”
In Kabul, senior diplomats and US military officials also could not confirm the report and would not comment publicly.
Some described the reports as “speculation”.
An intelligence official for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, who asked not to be identified, said the NDS was aware of reports that Mullah Omar had been killed by agents from Pakistan’s ISI while being moved from Quetta to North Waziristan.
NDS spokesman Lutfullah Mashal said the agency’s “intelligence gathering” had seen reports Mullah Omar had been killed on the way to North Waziristan.
“But I cannot officially confirm that he was killed,” Mashal said.
There have been reports in the past that Omar and other members of the Quetta shura had been killed or captured. Last week, some Pakistani media reported the Afghan Taliban leader had been captured in Pakistan.