By Sayed Salahuddin
Kabul - Taliban guerrillas said on Saturday they had killed a missing American commando they claimed to have captured in eastern Afghanistan last month. The United States military said it had no information to support the claim.
"We killed him at 11 o'clock today; we killed him using a knife and chopped off his head," Taliban spokesman Abdul Latif Hakimi said from an undisclosed location. He said that the body had been dumped on a mountain in the eastern province of Kunar.
The US military has said it has no information to suggest the Navy SEAL commando, part of a four-man team that went missing during a clash with militants in mountainous Kunar on June 28, has been captured.
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'We got the information we wanted from him during the interrogation'
Asked about the Taliban claim that the man had been killed, US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry O'Hara said he had no information to support it, but the military was looking into the report.
"We are still conducting a search hoping our missing service member is alive as we have no proof telling us otherwise," he said.
The US military has said two of the missing commandos were found dead on Monday, having been "killed in action", while another had been rescued and one was missing.
A US helicopter sent to aid the team was shot down the same day the team went missing during a battle with insurgents, killing all 16 troops aboard, the heaviest losses for US forces in a single combat operation since they overthrew the Taliban in late 2001.
Hakimi's information has often proven unreliable in the past, but he has appeared well informed about events surrounding the helicopter crash.
He said the body of the commando had been left on the top of a mountain in Kunar province's Shegal district.
"He is wearing red clothes," he said. "We got the information we wanted from him during the interrogation."
Hakimi had said earlier on Saturday that the man the guerrillas claimed to be holding was a commando officer and would be killed in two or three days following his interrogation.
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