BAGHDAD, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- U.S. and Iraqi scientists are carrying out DNA tests to see if al-Qaida's chief in Iraq was killed Saturday.
Zalmay Khalizad, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, told reporters Tuesday that U.S. officials did not believe Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaida's director of operations in Iraq and the key mastermind behind the escalating insurgency there, was among the eight suspected guerrillas killed in a raid on a house in Mosul in northern Iraq Saturday.
"Unfortunately, we did not get him in Mosul," Khalizad said.
However, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Tuesday that DNA tests were being conducted to see if al-Zarqawi was among the dead after all.
US Army spokesman Barry Venable said U.S. forces "employ whatever means required... to identify suspected or known terrorists or insurgents".
Four Iraqi police officers also died in the raid.
"We know that American and Iraqi forces... surrounded a house where there was fierce resistance and when the American and Iraqi forces jointly tried to storm the building the occupants blew themselves up," Zebari said.
