Islamic State terrorist linked to Paris massacre mastermind is killed in Syria by US drone strike

An ISIS leader with direct links to the ‘mastermind’ behind the Paris terrorist attacks has been killed in a drone strike in Syria, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Charaffe al Mouadan was killed in an U.S. airstrike on December 24, Baghdad-based US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren confirmed today.

Frenchman Al Mouadan has been linked to Paris attack ‘ringleader’ Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and was reportedly plotting additional attacks when he was killed.

Abaaoud, 28, was killed in a police raid in north Paris days after the coordinated shootings and bombings in the French capital on November 13.

‘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.’

The news comes just one day after it was announced that Iraqi troops had retaken the key city of Ramadi from ISIS, the latest in a number of losses in Syria and Iraq for the jihadists…

ISIS has recently lost control of Baiji, Sinjar and now Ramadi – all in Iraq – as well as a key dam on the Euphrates in Syria.

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.

Iraqi forces backed by US-led coalition air strikes had punched into the city centre on Tuesday,with the fighting over the final days of the battle concentrated around the former government complex.

ISIS fighters had been defending defended with snipers, suicide car bomb attacks and hundreds of roadside bombs and booby traps.

The advance by the government forces had also been hampered by the possible presence of dozens of families trapped in the combat zone and used by ISIS as human shields.

It was reported on Sunday that all ISIS fighters had left the government complex in the centre of the city.

After Ramadi, the army plans to move to retake the northern city of Mosul, the biggest population centre under ISIS control in Iraq and Syria.

Dislodging the militants from Mosul, which had a pre-war population close to two million, would effectively abolish their state structure in Iraq and deprive them of a major source of funding, which comes partly from oil and partly from fees and taxes on residents.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi vowed Monday that all remaining IS-held areas in the country would be retaken by the end of 2016.

Source: Daily Mail