The U.S. government is unable to confirm a French newspaper report that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to have died last month in Pakistan of typhoid fever, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Saturday.

"We cannot confirm the account," said the official, who declined to be indentified because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. "It`s quite possible that there was some talk of this, but in terms of being able to confirm this, that I can not do."