Anti-Taliban military commander Ahmad Shah Masood's health is "very critical" and getting worse following an assassination attempt this week, a senior opposition official told AFP Thursday.
"Unfortunately we have some negative news. The state of Masood's health has become very critical," close Masood aide Younis Qanooni said amid conflicting reports over the veteran guerrilla fighter's condition.
"He was supposed to become conscious 12 to 20 hours ago but since last night he is still in a coma and his health status is becoming worse and worse.
"He has become conscious only once since he was injured and that was when Rabbani visited him. The doctors have said it is impossible to move him."
Qanooni served as deputy defence minister during former president Burhanuddin Rabbani's government before its ouster from Kabul by the Taliban Islamic militia in 1996.
He said Masood was still in hospital in Khwaja Bahauddin, his base in Afghanistan's northeastern Takhar province where the suicide bombing assassination attempt took place on Sunday.
But Qanooni's statement contradicted an earlier claim by the opposition commander's brother, Ahmad Wali, that he had emerged from the coma and was steadily recovering.
"It has been delightfully noted that Ahmad Shah Masood, who was in a state of virtual coma after the suicide attack... has regained his body movements and is able to communicate slowly," Wali said in a signed statement from London.
He said the assassination attempt was "plotted" by the Pakistani military's Inter-Services Intelligence, suspected Saudi terrorist Osma bin Laden and the Taliban.
Earlier several opposition officials denied persistent reports that the attack on Masood was fatal.
Wali, who is charge d'affaires of the government-in-exile's mission in London, condemned the "terrorists' cowardly tactics".
"Such inhumane and desperate attempts would not the least help the terrorists in realizing their devil goal of crushing the spirit of resistance nurtured by the Afghans against the shameless foreign aggression on their country."
Masood loyalists entrenched in the northeastern mountains are locked in fighting with the Taliban militia ruling most of Afghanistan -- KABUL (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
