The last verified message from bin Laden was posted on the Internet on July 1, accusing Iraqi Shiites of waging "genocide" against Sunnis. A US official said the message was deemed authentic.

The last time images of him were seen was in October 2004, in a videotape delivered to the Arab television network Al Jazeera.

Born in Saudi Arabia to a wealthy family with close ties to the royals, bin Laden allegedly funded and directed the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed around 3,000 people.

His Al-Qaeda organisation has also 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.

He has been successfully avoided capture despite the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan, which toppled the Taliban regime that had provided him refuge and protection, and a 25-million-dollar bounty on his head.

Reports have regularly surfaced that the Al-Qaeda leader is in poor health.

The latest came from the US newsmagazine Time and the television network CNN -- both owned by Time Warner -- which reported on the weekend that bin Laden had fallen ill with an unspecified waterborne illness. Both stopped short of saying he was dead, however.

Time said "a well placed source in Washington" believed the hypothesis of bin Laden's death originated with "some Saudi intelligence analysts with no hard evidence to back it up. No one at a high level is satisfied it's true."

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