Taliban Leader Said to Be Injured in Firefight

— -- An Afghan Taliban source said today that the militant group's leader has been injured in a shootout with other senior Taliban members -- a claim the group stringently denied.

The source told ABC News Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour was attending a traditional “jirga,” or council meeting, in Pakistan designed to work out the differences between various Taliban factions when an argument erupted into gunfire.

Hours after reports surfaced about Mansour’s purported wounding, the Afghan Taliban published a statement on its website, saying the group “categorically reject[s] this fabricated claim of the enemy intelligence apparatus.” The group claimed that Mansour was not in the area and that there was no altercation in that part of Pakistan, anyway.

Mansour officially took over the Afghan Taliban after it was revealed in July that the group’s longtime, one-eyed leader Mullah Omar had been dead for two years, according to Afghan government and a former senior Taliban official.

In September the Afghan Taliban released a message purportedly from Mansour in which he called on unity among Taliban fighters.