KABUL: A senior Afghan Army general was killed Thursday in a helicopter crash in western Afghanistan, and two British soldiers died in a blast in the south on Wednesday, officials said.

The general, Fazaludin Sayar, one of four regional commanders, was in charge of the entire west of the country.

His helicopter, an Mi-17, hit bad weather in the morning and went down in the Adraskan District of Herat Province, the Defense Ministry said. All 12 others aboard also were killed, it said. The helicopter had been headed to a neighboring province, Farah.

All of the bodies were brought to Herat, the provincial capital, said Rauf Ahmadi, a police spokesman.

In a telephone call to a reporter in southern Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, asserted that militants had shot down the helicopter.

But a Defense Ministry spokesman, General Mohammad Zahir Azimi denied the report, saying the area of the crash had no insurgent activity.

The helicopter was flying low because of bad weather when it hit a mountain, he said.

After years of neglect, the Afghan Army’s aging helicopters are in bad shape. Forbidding mountainous terrain, lack of roads coupled with insurgent attacks on ground convoys have prompted the local and international authorities to rely heavily on the use of helicopters and other aircraft for movement.

In the deaths of the two British soldiers, the British Defense Ministry said they were killed during an operation against insurgents near Geresh in Helmand Province.

Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of additional troops from the United States are expected to join the fight this