Baghdad, Iraq ? Iraq’s foreign minister said tests were under way Monday to determine if the leader of the country’s most feared terror group was killed in a bloody weekend raid, but U.S. officials cast doubt on the notion that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was dead.

Speculation swept across Iraq as details trickled out about a pitched fight against suspected al-Qaida members on Saturday in the city where Saddam Hussein’s sons were killed in July 2003.

Eight insurgents and four Iraqi policemen died in the raid by U.S. and Iraqi forces, officials said.

In Moscow, visiting Iraqi Foreign Minister Hohshyar Zebari told Jordan’s official Petra news agency that authorities were testing DNA samples from several corpses to determine if al-Zarqawi was among them.

But the U.S. ambassador to Iraq said he doubted that the dead included al-Zarqawi.