KABUL — A helicopter strike killed “one of the most dangerous Taliban leaders” in southern Afghanistan, British military officials said Tuesday, but a local government official said the target might have been a lower-level fighter with the same name.

The strike occurred Monday, British officials said, when an Apache helicopter shot the Taliban leader, Mullah Mansoor, as he was traveling with two others by motorbike.

“We know it’s him,” one official said. The Taliban commander organized several recent attacks, including one last month that killed two British soldiers in the south.

Dawoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand province, where the strike occurred, said two militants in the region were known as Mullah Mansoor. The Taliban leader, Mullah Akhter Muhammad Mansoor, is the top commander in the south and was the director of the Kandahar airport in the Taliban government that was toppled in 2001. A lower-level commander who operates in the province is Mullah Ahmad Mansur.

In March, NATO troops in Helmand killed a senior Taliban leader named Maulawi Hassan, who was responsible for numerous roadside bombings and suicide attacks against NATO forces.