Taliban said on Tuesday that friends of Osama Bin Laden had told it he was still alive, after a weekend newspaper report suggesting he had died of typhoid. "We actually don't have any direct contacts with Al Qaeda in the battlefields because of the current situation," a Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif told AFP, referring to the terror network headed by bin Laden. "But according to some of Osama's friends we've contacted, he's alive," said Hanif, who tells the media he speaks for the Taliban. Dubai-based Al Arabiya television on Tuesday quoted a Taliban official as saying Osama Bin Laden was alive and in good health. The Arabic channel said its Pakistan bureau had received a call from the unnamed Taliban official a few days after a leaked French secret document said Saudi intelligence believed Bin Laden died last month in Pakistan. "The official said bin Laden was alive and that reports that he is ill are not true," said Bakr Atyani, Al Arabiya's Islamabad correspondent. "The Taliban checked with members who are close to Al Qaeda that these reports are baseless."