KABUL: Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said Monday that Taliban leader Mullah Omar had disappeared from his Pakistani hideout but did not confirm a claim, fiercely denied by the militants, that he was dead.
“We can confirm that he has been disappeared from his hideout in Quetta, [the capital of the southwestern Pakistani province] Baluchistan,” said Lutfullah Mashal, spokesman for the National Directorate of Security.
“He has been disappeared from his location during the last four to five days,” he added, speaking in English. “So far we cannot confirm the killing of Mullah Omar officially.”
Mashal’s comments came hours after an Afghan intelligence source called a handful of reporters to tell them on condition of anonymity that Omar had been killed in Pakistan by the Inter-Services Intelligence agency.
A separate source later told AFP that he had been missing for 11 days.
The Taliban have furiously denied that he is dead or missing.
Speaking to AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location, Afghan Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the news was “pure propaganda”.
The claims came exactly three weeks after the killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALs in Pakistan and amid a fierce wave of targeted attacks as the Taliban’s spring offensive gets under way.
Meanwhile, a roadside bomb killed four service members from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan’s volatile east Monday, the coalition said in a statement, one of the worst attacks on foreign troops in recent weeks.
ISAF gave no other details, on the nationalities of those killed. Most of the troops serving in the volatile eastern provinces near the border with Pakistan are American, although other NATO force are stationed there.