Morocco's Foreign Minister Mohamed Benaissa said reports that Moroccans were involved in the assassination of Afghan opposition leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, were “hasty and unfounded.”
Masood was on Friday reported to have succumbed to the injuries he sustained in a suicide bomb attack last Sunday.
“According to information available, the persons who assassinated the head of the Afghan opposition did not have Moroccan passports, Benaissa was quoted by the official Maghrebe Arab Presse (MAP) as telling "L'Economiste" daily in an interview published Friday.
Masood's death has left a gaping hole in the anti-Taliban alliance which clings to the Panjshir, northeastern Badakhshan province and pockets of territory in the north and west.
The 48-year-old ethnic Tajik defended the Panjshir against the Soviet army throughout the 1979-89 occupation and has never let it fall to the radical Islamic militia which captured Kabul in 1996 – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
