Afghan  Taliban leader dies: Afghanistan officials

DUSHANBE, December 4, 2015, Asia-Plus - Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has died of injuries, Afghanistan officials confirmed on Friday.

Mansour was critically injured in a gunfight on Wednesday in an argument with commanders in the militant group, Xinhua quoted Afghanistan officials as saying.

The incident came as the group has been divided into two factions after Mansour succeeded former Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar as the hardliner group''s leader after Omar was confirmed dead in late July.

We will recall that some media outlets reported yesterday that Taliban sources said on Wednesday that Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour has been seriously wounded in Pakistan in a shootout between senior members of the Islamist movement.

Two Taliban commanders reportedly said Mullah Akhtar Mansour was wounded when fighting broke out over strategic issues in the house of a senior Taliban leader called Mullah Abdullah Sarhadi outside Quetta in western Pakistan.

“During the discussion, some senior people developed differences and they opened fire on each other,” one of the commanders said, according to Reuters.

Five senior Taliban members had reportedly died on the spot and more than a dozen, including Mullah Mansour, had suffered serious bullet injuries.  Mansour was being treated in a private hospital after being hit four times by bullets from an AK-47 assault rifle, the Taliban commander said.

Meanwhile, the group’s main spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid dismissed their report as “baseless” and said Mansour was in Afghanistan.  “Akthar Mohammad Mansour is totally fine and nothing has happened to him,” he told Reuters yesterday.

The conflicting accounts deepen the confusion over the already opaque leadership situation in the Taliban following the death of the movement''s founder Mullah Mohammad Omar and cloud prospects for any resumption of stalled peace talks.

Mansour, Mullah Omar''s longtime deputy, was immediately named leader but some sections of the Islamist group quickly rejected his claim, accusing him of covering up Omar''s death and saying that Pakistan had steered his appointment.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said this week that he was ready to talk to Taliban members but he cautioned that since the death of Mullah Omar there was “no such thing as the Taliban.  There are groups of Taliban...”

According to some officials in the Kabul government, Mullah Mansour Dadullah, a senior commander in the group that opposes Mansour, was killed in last month''s fighting, although the claim has been denied by a spokesman for his faction.