The US military said today coalition forces killed more than 40 insurgents in a 12-hour battle in Afghanistan to take the Taliban death toll to nearly 200 in a fortnight.
Suspected Taliban insurgents ambushed a coalition patrol in villages in Kandahar province's Shah Wali Kot district with small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, the US military said.
Kandahar has been the site of repeated clashes in recent months.
Taliban spokesman Qari Mohammad Yousuf
The Taliban said they were unaware of any ground fighting in the Shah Wali Kot district, but said they had downed an American helicopter in the area.
"The chopper is completely burnt and everyone on board is dead," a Taliban spokesman said. "Whenever we blow up the Americans they claim such things to confuse the people.
"It is totally baseless. If the Americans had killed 200 of our mujahideen, we would have killed 50 of them as well."
Nato denied a helicopter had been lost.
There was no independent account of what happened.