A French newspaper published what it said was a report by the country's intelligence services that said Saudi Arabia believes Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in Pakistan this month. France's foreign intelligence service, the DGSE, refused to confirm the substance of the report, and no immediate official reaction was forthcoming from Saudi officials Saturday.
But European and Pakistani officials tracking bin Laden's whereabouts told AFP, on condition of anonymity, that the report could not be seen as reliable.
Often rumoured to be dead in the past -- only to appear later in audio or video recordings -- the leader of the Al-Qaeda terror network was believed to have taken refuge on the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Previous reported rumours have said that he suffered from a kidney disorder and was in poor health.
The French regional newspaper l'Est Republicain published what it said was a DGSE report dated September 21.
"According to a usually reliable source, the Saudi security services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead," the DGSE report quoted by the newspaper said.
It said that "information gathered by the Saudis" indicates that bin Laden "might have succumbed to a very serious case of typhoid fever resulting in partial paralysis of his lower limbs while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006.
"His geographic isolation provoked by constant fleeing is believed to have made medical assistance impossible (and) on September 4, 2006, the Saudi security services received preliminary information of his death."
L'Est Republicain said the Saudis were "waiting to obtain further details and notably the exact place of burial before officially announcing the news."
Bin Laden has been held responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed 3,019 people.
His Al-Qaeda organisation has been linked to several other attacks, including the 1998 US embassy bombings in Africa, a 2000 suicide bomb attack on a US warship off Yemen, and the 2004 Madrid train bombings.
Born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family with close ties to the oil-rich state's royal dynasty, bin Laden has been on the run since October 2001, when the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan and expelled the Taliban regime which had been harbouring him.
