Fourteen British armed personnel died today when their aircraft crashed in Afghanistan, the British Ministry of Defence said.
Among them wre 12 RAF personnel, a Royal Marine and an army soldier, the MoD siad.
Earlier it was reported that a Nato aircraft had gone missing in Afghanistan but there was no indication it had been shot down.
"An aircraft supporting the ISAF mission is missing, there are no reports at this time of any enemy action," the spokesman, Major Scott Lundy, said referring to the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force.
Major Lundy said he had heard that the Taliban were claiming to have shot the aircraft down but he rejected that.
"Their claims are absolutely false," he said. The Taliban, fighting to oust foreign forces, invariably claim to have shot down aircraft that foreign forces and the government say came down accidentally.
The last time the insurgents were known to have brought an aircraft down was last year when they hit a US military helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade during a battle in the eastern province of Kunar.