US forces have said they had killed the Taliban's military chief in southern Afghanistan, where the insurgency is at its bloodiest, a man in the top four of the group's leadership and with links to Osama bin Laden.
Akhtar Mohammad Osmani and two other guerrillas were killed in an air strike on Tuesday, a spokesman for the US-led coalition force, Col Tom Collins. said in Kabul.
"It's a major breakthrough, certainly a major victory in the fight against the Taliban. It's going to have an immediate impact." Osmani heads the group's military operations in its southern heartland, including the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, where foreign troops have suffered their worst casualties this year.
Collins said the three were killed in an airstrike in Helmand, adding Osmani played a key role involving the Taliban, al Qaeda and other militant groups.
The Taliban said Osmani was still alive. "We strongly deny this. He is not present in the area where American forces are claiming to have killed him," commander Mullah Hayat Khan told Reuters by telephone.
"The American and NATO forces from time to time make such false claims. It's just propaganda against the Taliban."
Collins said the Taliban would soon replace Osmani: "But for a while there is going to be a loss of capability."
This has been the bloodiest year since US-led forces ousted the Taliban's hardline government in 2001. More than 4,000 people have died and the worst fighting has been in the provinces under Osmani's command.