ISIS leader connected to Paris attack killed

Airstrikes from a US-led coalition have killed 10 Islamic State leaders in the last month, including at least one with links to the Paris attacks in November.

Charaffe al Mouadan was targeted and killed December 24 in Syria, said Army Col. Steve Warren, the military’s top spokesman in Baghdad.

‘He was a Syrian-based ISIL member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris attacks cell leader, ‘ Warren said, adding that he ‘was actively planning additional attacks against the West’.

Among the other leaders killed in December was a Syria-based Bangladeshi man who was educated in Britain and was allegedly an IS hacker.

Warren declined to say what type of aircraft was used to kill Mouadan.

“As long as Isil external attack planners are operating, the USA military will hunt them and kill them”.

“Part of those successes is attributable to the fact that the organization is losing its leadership”, Col Warren said.

Recapturing Ramadi, the provincial capital of Anbar, was one of the most significant victories for Iraq’s armed forces since ISIS swept across a third of the country in 2014. Two days later, the Pentagon said, a separate airstrike over Mosul killed Abdul Qader Hakim, whom American authorities believe also had links to the network that planned the Paris attacks. “We haven’t severed the head of the snake, and it’s still got fangs”.