Taliban denies Mullah Omar’s death

Former ISI chief Gul also vehemently denied that he was with Omar. Laughing at the reports and calling them completely baseless,he remarked “Was I killed too?” and “Am I speaking to you from heaven?”

General Gul said he was in Rawalpindi two days ago,though it was not clear whether the Afghan security directorate believed he was physically with Omar or was orchestrating the move from elsewhere.

Earlier,Afghan channel TOLO news reported quoting a source in the Afghan National Directorate of Security that Omar was killed in Pakistan.

According to the source,Omar has been killed two days ago. But there was no official confirmation of the report and as to who killed him.

American intelligence officials suspect Omar and other senior Taliban leaders have been safely harbored for years in Quetta with the support of part of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence,the military spy service formerly headed by Gul,who insisted he has never met Mullah Omar.

German Brig. Gen. Joseph Blotz,chief spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul,said NATO was looking into the reports of the Taliban leader’s death but could not confirm it. “We do not know if it is true or not,” he said.

On Monday morning,Afghan media had reported that the Taliban leader had been killed when he was being moved from Quetta to North Waziristan two days ago.

“Mullah Omar was killed on way from Quetta to North Wazirustan,” Afghanistan’s TOLO Television had said in one of its news bulletin.

One Afghan intelligence source had also said that Omar had been killed by Pakistan’s ISI agency,while another claimed he had been missing for 11 days.

The first source said that Omar had been killed on Friday,citing information received from sources within the Haqqani insurgent group,whose leaders are based in Pakistan.

“Based on ISI instruction through (former ISI chief) General Hamid Gul,Mullah Mohammad Omar was told to move from Quetta city of Pakistan to northern Waziristan,” the source said.

“As Mullah Omar was being transported from Quetta to North Waziristan by the ISI,he was secretly killed by the ISI.”

However,a second Afghan intelligence source who also spoke anonymously said that Omar had been missing for 11 days following a meeting with Gul.

“It has been 11 days since his close circle,the people around him,have no clue of his whereabouts. The Taliban leadership are all concerned and worried for the sudden disappearance of Mullah Omar,” the source said.

Mullah Mohammed Omar is regarded as the spiritual leader of the Taliban movement that operates in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He was Afghanistan’s de facto head of state from 1996 to late 2001,under the official title “Head of the Supreme Council”. The regime was toppled in a US invasion for its support to al-Qaeda.

The one-eyed leader is wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States since October 2001,for sheltering Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda militants in the years prior to the 11 September attacks. He was believed to be in Pakistan directing the Taliban insurgency against NATO forces and the Karzai administration in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan and Pakistan regularly trade accusations over Taliban insurgencies plaguing both their countries. There is deep distrust between Afghan intelligence and the ISI,which helped create the Taliban in the 1990s.