Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mansour releases audio message

The comments from Richard Olson, newly appointed USA special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, follow an audio message from the Taliban rebutting widespread reports that Mansour had been seriously wounded in a shootout.

Taliban spokesmen have since dismissed the report as propaganda from the Afghan intelligence service.

As of now, there has been no direct evidence for the alleged firefight between the senior commanders of the Taliban, nor has there been any statement from Mansour himself, though The New York Times reported that Taliban officials have promised to release a voice recording of Monsour to prove he is alive.

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“During the discussion, some senior people developed differences and they opened fire on each other”, one of the commanders said.It is unclear where the shooting took place, with some sources saying it happened outside Quetta in western Pakistan and others in the Taliban heartland near Kandahar in Afghanistan.

For two years, the militant group denied that its former supreme leader Mullah Omar had died until Afghan officials revealed in July that Omar he died in a hospital in Pakistan in 2013.

But speculation about his wellbeing intensified Friday after an Afghan government spokesman claimed on Twitter that Mansour did not survive the clash, which threatens to derail a fresh regional push to jump-start Taliban peace talks.

Vehement denials by the group of any firefight have fallen on skeptical ears, especially after they kept the death of longtime chief Mullah Omar secret for two years.

The confused picture has been further complicated by the emergence of groups claiming allegiance to Islamic State, which is battling the Taliban in some regions for leadership of the anti-government insurgency.

However, there was no independent verification of Mansour’s voice in the massage.

Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour is believed to be a proponent of talks with Afghan authorities … A breakaway faction of the Taliban led by Mullah Mohamed Rasool was formed last month, in the first formal division in the once-unified group.

But in a rare success, a US-Afghan military operation on Thursday freed more than 40 local soldiers and police held captive in a Taliban prison in the southern province of Helmand.

The voice in the clip could not be independently verified while some militant commanders said it appeared to be that of Mansour.

Mullah Akhtar Mansoor urges followers to ignore rumours of his death, describing them as “a lie and a propaganda”. ‘I am hundred per cent sure that Mullah Mansour is no more’.