Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansoor has reportedly died and Taliban has appointed Moulavi Haibatullah Akhunzada as the new caretaker chief, Pakistan’s local Urdu TV Channel 24 quoted its own sources from Afghanistan as saying Friday night.
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This handout photograph released by The Afghan Taliban on Thursday, which was taken on a mobile phone in mid-2014 is said to show Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour posing for a photograph at an undisclosed location in Afghanistan.
“Brothers, there is no truth in this news and it is absolutely baseless”.
“If Mansour has died, the Taliban will do everything in its power to keep that a secret for as long as possible”, Kabul-based military analyst Atiqullah Amarkhil told AFP. The assertion itself referred to an episode in that happened Friday. through which civilians have been killed by the Afghan National Army in an accidental attack.
Mansour, the longtime number two in the Taliban, was formally named leader immediately after Mullah Omar’s death was confirmed.
The voice in the clip could not be independently verified while some militant commanders said it appeared to be that of Mansour.
However, multiple reports claim that Mansour has either been critically wounded or killed in a firefight on Tuesday at an insurgent gathering in Kuchlak. “If they’d done it earlier it might have been more effective”, he said.
A man claiming to be Abdullah Sarhadi, a commander in Mansour’s group and former Guantanamo Bay detainee, staunchly rejected the reports as “enemy propaganda”. “I believe he’s dead”, an unnamed senior Taliban source said.
Afghan officials on Wednesday confirmed reports that Rasool’s deputy, Mullah Dadullah, was killed last month in a gunfight with Mansour loyalists.
The leader of the Afghan Taliban vowed to continue his group’s bloody, almost 14-year insurgency in an audio message released Saturday, urging his fighters to remain unified.
Newspapers hang for sale at a stand carrying headlines about the leader of the Afghan Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Even as it rejects the “rumours” and denies that the shooting incident took place, the statement implies that some divisions do exist, but says that “verbal differences do not mean escalation to armed conflict”. The audio message said internal disagreements were nothing to be concerned about. We have some disagreements on policy.
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“About the news that there was fighting between the Taliban in a meeting and my name was also mentioned, that I was wounded and some media and some people said that I passed away later”.
