The banned outfit Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has said that its spokesperson Muhammad Khorasani is “alive and well,” putting to rest media reports about his death in Afghanistan.

On Monday, Pakistani media citing sources reported that the TTP spokesperson had been killed in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province.

However, sources within the proscribed group later said that Muhammad Khorasani was alive.

They added that the man reportedly killed in Afghanistan was his namesake, Muhammad Khalid Khurasan, whose real name is Khalid Balti from the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan.

Balti was a former spokesperson of the TTP, and was the man who accepted responsibility for the Army Public School attack in 2014.

According to journalist Ihsanullah Mehsud, who reports on militancy in Pakistan's north, said that Khalid Balti was released from an Afghan prison following the Taliban takeover in August last year.

Sources within the TTP have said that Balti wasn't currently active with the TTP.

Authorities in Pakistan says Balti was involved in anti-Pakistan activities and ran a terrorist organisation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Miranshah district.

Khorasani was appointed as TTP’s spokesperson after Shaidullah Shahid and was involved in terror attacks against civilians and armed forces in Pakistan. According to available information, he has been attempting to unite the different factions of TTP and planning terror attacks against Pakistan with TTP chief Mufti Noor Wali Mehsood. Recently he had issued details of terrorist activities in Pakistan and hinted at more such attacks.

Last week DG ISPR Major General Babar Iftikhar during his press conference said that an operation was being conducted against the banned TTP. Negotiations had been started with the TTP at the request of incumbent Afghan government, he had said.

The military spokesperson said that the banned outfit was a non-state element that could not carry out any major attack in Pakistan.

He said that the Afghan government offered the option of bringing the TTP to the table and persuading them to meet Pakistan's demands.

The government announced late last year it had entered a month-long truce with the TTP, facilitated by Afghanistan's Taliban, but that expired on December 9 after peace talks failed to make progress.