Taliban supremo Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who had succeeded Mullah Omar as the chief of the militant outfit, has died of injuries, reports quoting Afghanistan officials said on Friday.
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“Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour died of injuries”, Sultan Faizi, the spokesman for the Afghan first vice president, wrote on Twitter without citing any evidence.
Agence France-Presse, however, quoted another anonymous Pakistani intelligence official as saying Mansour was “very seriously injured” in the clash.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid denied the incident ever took place and said Mansour was in Afghanistan. There was no independent verification of the clip, which raised questions as to why the Taleban have not yet released an audio or video clip from Mansour himself. “Akthar Mohammad Mansour is totally fine and nothing has happened to him”, he said.
The insurgence group, which recently took control of the Afghan city of Kunduz for two weeks, experienced disagreement among its members in July after revealing that its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, had died in 2013.
“Simply posting denials… won’t be considered credible enough, especially after Omar’s death was concealed for years”.
– Mansour’s leadership was challenged among some followers, and a breakaway Taliban faction emerged, followed by clashes between the two groups.
However, assuming leadership by Mansour has divided the group into several factions and the prominent one is led by Mullah Mohammad Rasoul, a close aide to Omar’s family.
U.S. Special Forces stormed a Taliban prison in Afghanistan, successfully freeing dozens of Afghan security personnel during a joint operation with local forces, American military officials said Friday, NBC News reported. Regardless of the objective, the raid marks a rare success for Afghan security forces who have been struggling to repel insurgents that continue to expand northward.
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Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry announced this week that Ghani and Sharif are to meet, along with representatives of the United States and China, to seek a consensus on whether peace talks between the Taliban and Ghani’s government can be restarted.
