An Islamic State (IS) leader with “direct” ties to the alleged mastermind of the Paris terror attacks was among 10 of the group’s leaders killed in Syria and Iraq this month, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The US military says such strikes are helping to weaken the jihadist group, which captured large parts of Iraq and Syria last year, but has recently seen significant setbacks, including this week’s loss of Ramadi in Iraq.
Baghdad-based US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said French national Charaffe el Mouadan was killed in a US-led coalition strike on Thursday last week. He had been plotting further attacks against the West, Warren said.
“He was a Syrian-based ISIL member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris attacks cell leader,” Warren said in a video call, using an alternative acronym for the Islamic State group.
Abaaoud was killed in a police raid in Paris five days after the Nov. 13 terror attacks that left 130 people dead and hundreds more wounded.
A French source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was no immediate evidence showing el Mouadan was involved in the Paris attacks, but the official said el Mouadan had been close to Samy Amimour, one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Bataclan music venue.
El Mouadan, 26, grew up in a grimy Paris suburb, and was the son of Morocco-born parents and one of eight siblings.
He was arrested in October 2012 while preparing to travel with Amimour and a third man, Samir Bouabout, to fight in either Yemen or Afghanistan, a source close to the investigation said.
Though the men faced charges, they were nonetheless released and had within a year found their way to Syria.
El Mouadan’s path to radicalization appears to have been through the Internet, just as investigators believe was the case for Amimour and Bouabout.
The source said a witness at the Bataclan heard an attacker ask whether a fellow assailant was going to call a certain “Souleymane.” Souleymane was the name el Mouadan used on Twitter and in Syria, but it is a common nickname and French investigators are not sure the attacker was referring to el Mouadan.
The US has since August last year led an international coalition attacking the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
France started bombing Syria in the wake of the Paris terror attacks, but Warren would not say if Paris was involved in the strike against el Mouadan.
Among the other Islamic State leaders killed this month was Abdel Kader Hakim, an “external operations facilitator” who was killed in Mosul, Iraq, on Saturday. Warren said Hakim was a veteran fighter and forgery specialist, who had links to the Paris attack network, but he did not give additional details.
“His death removes an important facilitator with many connections in Europe,” Warren said.
On Dec. 10, Siful Haque Sujan, a Bangladeshi man who was educated in Britain and was allegedly an Islamic State hacker, was killed near the group’s stronghold of Raqa in Syria.
After months of preparations, the Iraqi military declared the city of Ramadi liberated from the Islamic State group on Monday.
Warren said that part of the success in Ramadi and other areas was due to the killing of Islamic State leaders.
“We’re striking at the head of this snake,” he said, while cautioning that “it’s still got fangs.”
The Pentagon listed the other slain Islamic State leaders as Rawand Dilsher Taher, an “external operations facilitator,” who was killed near Raqa; Khalil Ahmad Ali al-Wais, the “emir of Kirkuk province” in Iraq; Abu Anas, a roadside bomb expert who was killed near Kirkuk; Yunis Khalash, a “deputy financial emir” in Mosul; Mithaq Najim, a “deputy emir” in Kirkuk; Akram Muhammad Sa’ad Faris, a “commander and executioner” in Tal Afar, Iraq; and Tashin al-Hayali, an “external operations facilitator,” who was killed near Mosul, Iraq.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS