ISIL claims its Afghan leader is alive

Militants say audio proves Saeed did not die in drone hit

KABUL // ISIL yesterday released an audio tape it said was of the movement’s leader for Afghanistan, contradicting reports that he was killed in a US drone strike. The message, purportedly from Hafeez Saeed, was posted on militant websites two days after the Afghan intelligence agency said he had been killed in an airstrike in Nangahar province that killed more than 30 militants.

The United States has said it conducted an airstrike there Friday, without elaborating.

The audio could not be independently verified.

Abdul Hassib Sediqi, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security, said on Saturday that Saeed was killed in the strike. He offered no photographs or other evidence but said that Afghan authorities verified that a corpse from Friday’s strike was Saeed. The strike came after Afghan officials earlier said another US airstrike killed the affiliate’s second-highest official, Gul Zaman, and six others, including a former Pakistani Taliban spokesman named Shahidullah Shahid who earlier had joined the group.

In the audio, a man speaking Pashtun called on listeners to join ISIL. He is also heard criticising the Taliban. The audio included no time stamps to verify its date. The ISIL group’s Al Bayan radio identified the man as Saeed, who is not well-known in Afghanistan.

Disenchanted extremists from the Taliban and other organisations, inspired by ISIL’s territorial gains in Syria and Iraq and its slick online propaganda, have begun raising its black flag in extremist-dominated areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent months.