Taliban says fighters who downed US chopper alive

KABUL: Taliban denied Thursday that the fighters responsible for downing a US helicopter, killing 38 people, had been killed.

The comments came after General John Allen, commander of the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan, said Wednesday that the insurgents responsible had been hunted down and killed in an air strike.

But Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told AFP: "This is not true. After seeing the enemy statement, we contacted the fighter who shot down the helicopter and he's not dead. He's busy conducting war elsewhere in the country."

Mujahid added that four Taliban fighters had been killed in the US air strike but not those who shot down the helicopter.

The Taliban is known to exaggerate and distort its public statements in relation to the insurgency.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011