WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- U.S. forces are checking whether Iraqi jihadist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed this weekend in Mosul, but other officials played the reports down.
"Efforts are being made to determine who was killed" in a coalition forces raid on a house in the northern Iraqi city Saturday "and if Zarqawi was among them," a U.S. official in Washington told United Press International Sunday evening.
But other officials told United Press International not to give credence to the story.
"We believe the report to be false. It is unlikely that Zarqarwi is dead," an administration official said.
Other experts and analysts were also skeptical, saying his group showed no signs of being decapitated, and pointing out that the first reports of his death had appeared in unreliable local media outlets.
The U.S. official said the efforts he referred to were not initiated in response to media reports but rather because of what was found by coalition forces on the ground.
The official referred a reporter to the Pentagon for more details, but officials there said they had no information about the reports.
"I talked to (my counterparts in) Baghdad twice today and they didn't make any mention of it," a Pentagon official said.
Terrorism expert and analyst Evan Kohlman also played down the reports.
"If anything, (Zarqawi's group) has been more active, not less, since Saturday," he told UPI. "Today, the leadership in Mosul even claimed responsibility for an operation there, which suggests the command structure there is relatively intact."
"There's nothing in their behavior that would lead me to think he was dead," he concluded.
The U.S. official told UPI that eight suspected al-Qaida militants had died, some by their own hand apparently to avoid capture, during the fierce gun battle that the raid provoked.
