Mullah Muhammed Omar sheltered Osama bin Laden before 9/11 and then led insurgency against US forces

Taliban supremo Mullah Muhammed Omar died two years ago in Pakistan, Afghanistan's intelligence agency said yesterday, after unnamed government and militant sources reported the demise of the warrior-cleric.

Omar has cast a long shadow over Afghanistan ever since he led a young band of zealots to power almost two decades ago, imposing brutal Islamist rule over the country.

He outraged the international community with his fundamentalist regime's enforcement of Sharia law and strict bans on most sport, television and music.

Omar and the Taliban provoked international outrage in March 2001 by blowing up the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan. He then incurred the wrath of the United States by giving shelter to al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, prompting a US-led invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

After his government was toppled in Kabul late that year, Omar headed a raging insurgency from the shadows.

For one of the world's most wanted men, relatively little is known about Omar. He was hardly ever photographed and had never flown on a plane and had left Afghanistan just once, to visit Pakistan.

His US State Department website wanted profile, offering a US$10 million bounty, has two indistinct pictures and almost no details except that he was tall and male with a black beard and a shrapnel wound to the right eye.