Two high-ranking Afghan Taliban officials have confirmed the death of their leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and say the group's council has elected a successor.
The two told The Associated Press that the Taliban Shura, or Supreme Council, has chosen Mullah Akhtar Mansoor as the new leader. He has been acting as Mullah Omar's deputy for the past three years.
The two Taliban officials say the seven-member-council has been meeting in the Pakistani city of Quetta.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized by the council to talk to the media.
They also said the group chose Sirajuddin Haqqani as their new deputy leader.
The Afghan government announced Wednesday that the longtime leader was dead.
"I can confirm that Mullah Omar is dead," the spokesman for Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security Abdul Hassib Sediqi told NBC News. "According to our intelligence Mullah Omar has died in a hospital in Pakistan a couple years ago."
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Rumors have circulated for years that the leader of the militant group that ruled Afghanistan until being toppled by U.S.-backed forces in 2001 had died.
Afghan intelligence officials told NBC News earlier that the government came to the conclusion Omar had died about two years earlier during a high-level national security meeting Wednesday morning.
The government had sufficient information to conclude that Omar died of hepatitis B about two years ago, and his death was kept secret to keep the group together, a second intelligence source told NBC News.
