Top Taliban leader killed

  Akhtar Mohammad Osmani, top leader of the Taliban's, was killed, on Saturday, by the U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan. Osmani was close to Osama bin Laden and helped coordinate relations with al Qaeda.

  Spokesman of the U.S. - led coalition force, Colonel Tom Collins, said in Kabul that Osmani and two other guerillas were killed in an air strike on an isolated desert road. Osmani's car was destroyed in the attack in Helmed, one of the six provinces in which Osmani controlled the Taliban's fighting machine.

  The U.S. coalition had taken four days to check intelligence and other sources to confirm his identity.

  The Taliban denied he was dead. "We strongly deny this. He was 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 claims. It's just propaganda against the Taliban."

  Another Taliban spokesman said three men were killed in Thursday's attack, but not Osmani.

  After Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leading al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in a U.S. air strike in June, Osmani is the most senior Islamist militant killed. "Mullah Osmani is the highest ranking Taliban leader that we've ever killed", Colonel Collins said. "His death is very significant and will hit the Taliban's operations".

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