Taliban fighters have said they killed a missing American commando they claimed to have captured in eastern Afghanistan last month.

The US 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 on Saturday 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 28 June, has been captured.

Asked about the Taliban claim that the man had been killed, US military spokeswoman Lieutenant Cindy Moore said: "I don't have any information on that."

Commando killed

Hakimi, whose information has often proved unreliable in the past, said the body of the soldier had been left on the top of a mountain in Kunar's Shegal district.

"He is wearing red clothes," he said. "We got the information we wanted from him during the interrogation."

Hakimi said earlier on Saturday that the man the fighters claimed to be holding was a commando officer and would be killed in two or three days following his interrogation.

The Pakistan-based Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) news agency also quoted a fighter commander in Kunar, Mohammad Ismail, as saying that the commando had been killed.

AIP quoted Hakimi as saying the killing followed a decision by the Taliban's council of religious leaders.

The US military has said two of its missing commandos were found dead on Monday, having been "killed in action", while another had been rescued and one was missing.

Hundreds of US soldiers, backed by Afghan troops and helicopters, have been searching for the missing commando in Kunar for the past 12 days.

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