Taliban leader Mullah Omar dead, says Afghan spy agency

The Afghanistan president’s office said Wednesday that intelligence has confirmed that reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar is dead.

Rumors had swirled for years that the one-eyed leader of the militant group that ruled Afghanistan until being toppled by U.S.-backed forces 2001 had passed away.

“We confirm officially that he is dead”, Seddiqi told The Associated Press.

Afghan officials are saying Omar’s death, even if it’s not particularly recent, proves the need for peace talks, though the timing seems awkward since it would undercut Omar’s own endorsement of the process. The government had sufficient information to conclude that Omar died of hepatitis B about two years ago, and his death was kept secret to keep the group together, the source added on condition of anonymity.

The militant group has not commented on the claim but a Taliban spokesperson told the BBC that they would issue a statement shortly.

He died in April 2013 in a Karachi hospital under suspicious circumstances.

Media reports in Afghanistan and Pakistan this week said Omar died about two years ago, with some of the reports indicating his son was in a position to take over.

Although there has been no official confirmation, several sources in Kabul who have had close dealings with the Taliban note possible hints that Omar could no longer be in control.

The United States, he said, believes the Taliban has an opportunity to make genuine peace with the Afghan government and rebuild their lives in peace in Afghanistan.

We are aware of the reports of the passing away of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader.

Omar, once a rural Islamic cleric, created the Taliban – the plural of the Pashto word for “student” – in the 1990s in the wake of the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from the country, aiming to impose Islamic law on Afghanistan and remove foreign influence from the country.

The meeting to be held in the hill resort of Murree just outside Pakistan’s federal capital of Islamabad would be more substantive, raising hopes of a viable peace process to end the conflict in Afghanistan, the officials said.

“These death confirmations and rejections are all part of a big pitch for power within an increasingly fractured and rudderless (Taliban) organization”, he said, speaking before the palace issued its statement. Twice in 2011, the Taliban denied speculation that he had been killed.

They agreed to meet again in the coming weeks, drawing worldwide praise, but many ground commanders openly questioned the legitimacy of the Taliban negotiators, exposing unsafe faultlines within the movement.

In the last purported message from Mullah Omar, released this month to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Mullah Omar endorsed the Afghan peace talks as religiously “legitimate”. The BBC reported that the latest reports of Mullah Omar’s death were being taken more seriously than previous such reports.