Alwaght-A major split is emerging within the Taliban terrorist group in Afghanistan after a faction linked to the militant claimed that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former head of the group, was poisoned to death.
In a Saturday statement, the Fidai Mahaz militant faction also claimed that Omar was killed based on a conspiracy involving Taliban’s current leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour.
Taliban confirmed Thursday that Omar had died, saying the group had chosen Mansour as his successor. A day earlier, the Afghan intelligence announced that Omar had died “under mysterious circumstances” in the Pakistani city of Karachi in April 2013.
Mansour replaced Omar’s medicine with a poisonous one imported from the Emirati city of Dubai in a bid to gradually kill him, the statement alleged, saying Omar lost his life three days after taking the poisonous medicine.
According to the Fidai Mahaz statement, the issue of the opening of Taliban’s liaison office in Qatar in 2013 had sparked serious arguments between Omar and Mansour.
Mansour, a native of the southern province of Kandahar, served as aviation minister during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan
However, there are other conflicting reports on the death of the former Taliban leader, with some saying Mullah Mohammed Omar was killed with bullets and some blaming various diseases for his death.
Veteran Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai says sources among Taliban militants said that Omar’s exhumed body had two bullet holes on the head and the chest, while a former Taliban minister says he died of tuberculosis.
Mullah Omar was a secretive head of the Taliban and hosted Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda in the years of Taliban’s rule over Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001. He then waged a decade-long insurgency against U.S. troops after the 2001 invasion that ended Taliban rule.
