French foreign minister says Afghan opposition leader is dead

PARIS (AP) -- Afghanistan's military opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood was assassinated in an attack by suicide bombers, the French foreign minister said Friday, but a Massood spokesman denied it.

"This assassination fills me with very great sadness," Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine said in a statement.

A spokesman for Massood said the French statement was untrue.

"The reports about the death are false," said Dr. Abdullah, who uses only one name. "He is in critical condition, but he is not dead."

Earlier Friday, Muhamad Salekh Registani, an Afghan opposition envoy in Moscow, said Massood had slipped into a coma for the third time since being wounded.

In the attack Sunday, two men posing as journalists detonated a bomb that may have been hidden in a television camera. The blast in northern Afghanistan killed both bombers and one of Massood's spokesmen.

Massood was taken to Tajikistan, where he was hospitalized.

Massood's fate since the bombing has been shrouded in mystery. Initially the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported that he was killed in the attack.

On Thursday, the Afghan opposition forces named Gen. Muhammad Fahim, an active leader of the opposition since 1973, to temporarily replace Massood.

The Taliban rules about 95 percent of Afghanistan, with Massood's alliance in control of the remaining 5 percent, mostly in the north.

The opposition is a fractured collection of groups who fought each other when they ruled much of Afghanistan for four years until the Taliban took control in September 1996. The opposition's deposed government still holds Afghanistan's seat in the United Nations and operates several embassies.