White House confirms death of ex-Taliban leader
The White House has confirmed that Mullah Mohammed Omar, the former leader of Taliban militant group in Afghanistan, is dead.
On Wednesday, the Afghan intelligence announced that Omar died in Karachi in April 2013 “under mysterious circumstances”.
The White House said on Friday that the US intelligence community had also assessed the report and that they confirmed its accuracy.
“While the exact circumstances of his death remain uncertain, it is clear that his demise, after decades of war and thousands of lives lost, represents a chance for yet more progress on the path to a stable, secure Afghanistan,” the administration said in a statement.
The White House still described Afghanistan as a dangerous country where insurgency is rampant.
“Afghanistan remains a dangerous place, and the Afghan people still suffer from a brutal insurgency that continues to take innocent lives and hinder Afghanistan’s prospects for peace,” the White House warned.
The militant group “choose to continue to fight their own people and destabilize their own country, or they can choose peace,” read the statement.
“We encourage the Taliban to heed President Ghani’s call for reconciliation and make genuine peace with the Afghan Government.”
A day after Kabul’s announcement, the militant group reportedly appointed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour as its new leader.
Mansour, a native of the southern province of Kandahar, served as aviation minister during the Taliban rule in Afghanistan in the 1990s.
He was widely assumed to be one of the major candidates to replace Omar, although his position was undermined when he started to spread the news of Omar’s death. He also served as the second-in-command of the Taliban for a period of time.
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