Canada's military is investigating a sketchy, but shocking report that the suicide bomber who killed a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan last week may have had his own connections to Canada, and al Qaeda.

On Wednesday, an Agence France-Presse report cited a Taliban spokesperson who said the bomber may have been a Canadian named Mohammed Abdullah, from a family with well-documented connections to al Qaeda.

In Ottawa, Defence Minister David Pratt reacted to the allegation with caution.

"You have to keep in mind the source here -- it is apparently a Taliban member and we take all of the information that they provide us with a grain of salt," he told reporters outside the Commons.

"I can't confirm anything at this point," the minister added "We're going to need a lot more evidence and a lot more details from the folks in Afghanistan."

Pratt said DNA evidence may be used to identify the attacker who killed Cpl. Jamie Murphy of Conception Harbour, Nfld., and an Afghan bystander about a kilometre from the Canadian base in Kabul on Jan. 27.

Taliban spokesperson Mohammad Saiful Adel reportedly told AFP that suicide bomber's father was an al Qaeda member who fought against the Soviets and spent a lot of his life in Pakistan and in Afghanistan.

The spokesperson alleges the bomber was Mohammad Abdullah, "the child of a Canadian citizen from Egypt named Abdul Rehman."

"He was killed during a recent operation by the Pakistan army against the village of Angoor Adda, in the Pakistani tribal zone," Agence France-Presse said in a report from Kabul.

But it was Ahmed Said Khadr, not Abdul Rehman, whose death last October was recently confirmed through DNA analysis.

U.S. intelligence officials allege that Ahmed Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian, was an associate of Osama Bin Laden.

He was first detained as a terrorist suspect in Pakistan eight years ago. At the time, then-prime minister Jean Chretien intervened, effecting Khadr's release.

Of the five sons in the Khadr family, Abdullah is the only one who disappeared after September 11, 2001, and had never been tracked down.

His younger brother, Abdurahman Khadr, talked to CTV News in a telephone interview from his Toronto home on Wednesday.

"I don't know what to think about it right now. I'm just trying to call them right now and find out what's happening with my family," he said.

Asked if he's worried about his brother, Khadr said no.

"I don't know if I should be because I don't think it was him."

Last month, Abdurahman Khadr told reporters he and his older brother had trained at an al Qaeda-related training camp in Afghanistan.

"It's a normal thing that everybody does in Afghanistan," he said at a news conference arranged to explain the complicated journey he took back to Canada after being released from the U.S. prison for 'enemy combatants' in Guantanamo Bay.

Another Khadr son is still in detention in Cuba. And the fourth is in a Pakistan hospital, being treated for wounds suffered in the shootout that killed his father.

On Wednesday, Pratt said officials are investigating the allegations.

"We want to check things out," he said. "Obviously that investigation hasn't been completed at this point."

Canadian officials have confirmed that human remains were collected from the blast site in Kabul.

Allied forces run DNA tests on dead enemy as a matter of routine. The FBI and U.S. military intelligence have extensive data banks of DNA on suspected terrorists.

Afghan authorities and the International Security Assistance Force, of which Canada is part, have not yet revealed details of the suicide bomber except to say he had rigged his bomb with mortars and artillery as well as explosives.