Mullah Omar on the run - Afghan government

Taliban leader Mullah Omar is still alive and on the run inside Afghanistan, but there has been no sign of Osama bin Laden for months, a senior Afghan official in the south of the country said yesterday.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and his special representative for the south, told Reuters there were regular reports of Mullah Omar travelling in southern Afghanistan with a small entourage.

"He is travelling by motorcycle or by foot," he said in an interview in his house in Kandahar, adding that the cleric was not able to organise any opposition to the government.

"The guy is on the run, and spends 24 hours a day planning how to run and where to run," he said.

Karzai said the bearded one-eyed cleric had been spotted in a broad belt stretching from Zabul province in the southeast, through the central Uruzgan province and his birthplace Deh Rawud to Helmand province in the southwest.

The US airstrike on four villages close to Deh Rawud last month seems to have been at least partly prompted by the idea that Mullah Omar could have been sheltering in the area.

US military officials have said special forces teams surrounded the villages because they had received reports that Mullah Omar or other senior Taliban leaders were there. Villagers blame false intelligence spread by people with malicious intent.

Afghan officials say that at least 46 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in the air strike which followed. Many of the victims were attending wedding festivities.

Karzai said US special forces teams had a very good track record in the region and continued to make regular arrests of people connected with the Taliban regime.

But he said he had "no idea" whether bin Laden was still alive or inside Afghanistan, or even whether he had survived a massive US air attack on his former mountain hideout in the Tora Bora mountains late last year.

Afghan authorities in Kabul also say they receive regular reports about Mullah Omar but no solid evidence about bin Laden.

Bin Laden is blamed for masterminding the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington through his al Qaeda network, which was given shelter by the Taliban regime.

Mullah Omar is believed to have fled the southern city of Kandahar, his former stronghold, just before it fell to opposition forces in early December last year.