US says it has killed top Taliban leader

US forces said yesterday they had killed the Taliban's military chief in southern Afghanistan, who had close links to Osama bin Laden and was heir to the rebel leadership.

Akhtar Mohammad Osmani was the most senior leader killed yet and was targeted in a region where the insurgency is at its bloodiest, a military spokesman said. The Taliban denied he was dead.

Osmani and two other guerillas were killed in an air strike on their car on an isolated desert road on Tuesday, spokesman for the US-led coalition force, Colonel Tom Collins, said in Kabul.

Osmani could be the most senior Islamist militant killed since Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leading al Qaeda in Iraq, died in a US air strike in June.

He controls the Taliban's fighting machine in six provinces in its southern heartland, including Helmand and Kandahar where foreign troops, mainly British and Canadian, have suffered their worst casualties this year.

Osmani was also close to bin Laden and helped co-ordinate relations with Al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

Collins said Osmani's car was destroyed in the attack in Helmand and the US coalition had taken four days to check intelligence and other sources to confirm his identity.