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ISLAMABAD: The Afghan Taliban on Tuesday dismissed reports that Mullah Muhammad Yaqoob, a senior Taliban leader and the son of the insurgency’s late founder, Mullah Omar, had been killed in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar.
Yaqoob, 31, is Omar’s eldest son and in charge of the Taliban’s military commission in 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.
Reports of Yaqoob’s death could undermine unity within the insurgency and threaten a fledgling peace process to bring a negotiated end to an 18-year-long war in Afghanistan. 
“This is an utter lie, which Kabul is spreading to hide its shame and defeat,” Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid told Arab News, referring to reports that Yaqoob had been killed. 
A statement released by the Taliban on Tuesday also dismissed reports of Yaqoob’s death.
Afghanistan’s first deputy speaker of the national assembly Zahir Qadir had last claimed in 2015 that Omar’s son had been killed in Quetta, followed by quick denials from the Taliban. 
The same year, the Taliban finally conceded that Omar, the one-eyed Afghan cleric who transformed a small group of seminary students into a national guerrilla insurgency, was dead. The Afghan government believes he died in a hospital in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi in April 2013.
The Taliban are currently engaged in a flurry of talks with representatives of the US government to find a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan. They have so far refused direct talks with the Kabul government whom they view as an illegitimate, foreign-appointed regime.