ISIS leader linked to Paris attacks planner killed
LONDON -- A spokesman for the U.S. military said Tuesday that an ISIS leader with a "direct link" to the man who coordinated the Nov. 13 terror attacks in Paris had been killed in a Christmas Eve airstrike in Syria.
Col. Steve Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, said a militant commander named Charaffe al Mouadan was killed in the Dec. 24 strike.
Warren said a total of 10 ISIS leaders have been killed in airstrikes over the past month.
They were killed mainly by drone strikes in Iraq and Syria. He offered few details, but said at least two of those killed were linked to the Paris attacks. He said one was directly tied to those who planned the violence in Paris and was actively planning other assaults against the West. Most appeared to be mid-level leaders.
Warren said that one of the others killed was from Bangladesh but spent time in Britain and was a hacker for ISIS and coordinated anti-surveillance technology.
Warren said Mouadan had a "direct link" to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the European jihadist believed to have planned the carnage in Paris who was killed in a raid on an apartment in a suburb of the French capital about a week later.
Abaaoud was a well-known jihadist even before the Nov. 13 attacks in the French capital left 130 people dead, and he had boasted to ISIS' online magazine about being able to travel unimpeded between Europe and Syria.
Warren provided no further information on what link there was between Mouadan and Abaaoud, but said Mouadan was "actively planning attacks against the West."
He said on his Twitter account that the U.S. military would continue to target ISIS leaders suspected of planning attacks on America and its allies.