Paris attacks planner killed in Syria

"Islamic State" (IS) member and French national Charaffe al-Mouadan was killed on December 24, according to the US Department of Defense. He had direct links to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the alleged leader of the attacks in Paris on November 13 who died in a police raid a few days after the massacre.

Al-Mouadan was among 10 IS leadership figures killed in the past months with targeted drone airstrikes by the US-led coalition against IS in Iraq in Syria, US Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the military campaign, told reporters on Tuesday.

Al-Mouadan had been actively plotting further attacks against the West, Warren said without giving details.

A coalition airstrike also killed Abdul Qader Hakim, who facilitated the militants' external operations and also had links to the Paris attack network, Warren said. He was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul on December 26.

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

"Now that he's dead, ISIL has lost a key link between their networks," Warren said.

The announcements come a day after the Iraqi army said it had retaken the provincial capital Ramadi, west of the capital Baghdad, which IS had captured in May.

Warren said that "part of these successes is attributable to the fact that the organization [IS] is losing its leadership." He warned, however that "it's still got fangs."

ng/jil (Reuters, AFP, dpa)