Kabul:
The Taliban said on Monday that its leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, is alive and "living in a safe place," disputing reports coming from inside Afghanistan's intelligence agency indicating that he had been killed in Pakistan two days ago.
A senior Afghan official said the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security, had the information on his death from a good source, but it remained unconfirmed. The source had not seen Mullah Omar's body but the agency trusts the source, the official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing an intelligence issue. Afghan officials have reported Mullah Omar's death erroneously before.
Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, called the information "totally" false.
"We totally deny such reports that get published by our enemies and then other media publish the same baseless reports," Mr. Mujahid, speaking by cell phone from an undisclosed location, said.
Privately, Western officials in Kabul also expressed skepticism and some American diplomats in the region said there was no truth to the rumor.
Taliban fighters and civilian residents of North Waziristan contacted by telephone said they had not heard of Mullah Omar's death occurring in their region.
Reports of Mullah Omar's death spread quickly in Kabul after Tolo television, a major news channel here, citing an unnamed source inside the security directorate, reported on Monday that he had been shot dead two days ago as he was being moved from Quetta in southern Pakistan to North Waziristan by the former Pakistani intelligence chief, Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul.
A source inside the Security Directorate, speaking on condition of anonymity, provided similar details to The New York Times. But reached by telephone in Pakistan, General Gul laughed at the reports and called them completely baseless.
"Was I killed too?" he said. "Am I speaking to you from heaven?"
General Gul said he was in Rawalpindi two days ago, though it was not clear whether the Afghan security directorate believed he was physically with Mr. Omar or was orchestrating the move from elsewhere.
American intelligence officials suspect Mullah Omar and other senior Taliban leaders have been safely harbored for years in Quetta with the support of part of the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the military spy service formerly headed by General Gul, who insisted he has never met Mullah Omar.
German Brig. Gen. Joseph Blotz, chief spokesman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, said NATO was looking into the reports of the Taliban leader's death but could not confirm it.
"We do not know if it is true or not," he said.