A SPOKESMAN FOR the Afghan Taliban has denied local media reports stating that the group’s leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has been killed in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s TOLO television news said Omar had been killed on a journey between Quetta and North Wazirustan, a 450-mile corridor along the country’s northwest border with Afghanistan.

The reports did not say where precisely, or how, Omar had been killed – though Chinese state news agency Xinhua adds that the death was confirmed when it contacted a security official.

The report has been labelled as ‘propaganda’ by a spokesman for the group, however, who asserted that Omar was not even in Pakistan.

“The report about the death of Mullah Omar is merely a propaganda to demoralise Mujahideen. Mullah Omar is alive. He is inside Afghanistan and is leading Mujahideen against foreign troops,” the spokesman said.

“Reports regarding the killing of Amir-ul-Moemineen (Omar) are false. He is safe and sound.”

The AFP news agency also reported sources confirming the death, with that source citing information received from an insurgent group that the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI had “secretly killed” Omar.

A second Afghan intelligence source told the agency that Omar had not been accounted for for 11 days, since a meeting with a former ISI leader.

As Head of the Supreme Council, Omar was the de facto head of state in Afghanistan when the country was under Taliban rule between 1996 and late 2001.