The Afghan Taliban today rejected as "propaganda" unsourced media reports that their reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, had been killed in Pakistan, saying he was alive and in Afghanistan and vowing to continue their insurgency.
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."
A spokesman for the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), said its sources knew that Mullah Omar had been living in the Pakistani town of Quetta in the Baluchistan region of Pakistan but had recently gone missing.
"We can confirm that he has been disappeared from his hideout in Quetta in Baluchistan for the last four or five days," an NDS spokesman told a news conference. "We can't confirm if he is dead or alive."
With a $10 million (€7.1 million) US bounty on his head, he fled with the rest of the Afghan Taliban leadership to Quetta after their government was toppled by US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. They formed the "Quetta shura", or leadership council.
The Taliban were overthrown for refusing to hand over al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after the Septemer 11th, 2001, 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, on May 2nd.
Reuters