The Pentagon said that an ISIL leader with "direct" ties to the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks was among 10 of the group’s higher-ups killed in Syria and Iraq this month.

The Pentagon said that an ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) leader with "direct" ties to the alleged mastermind of the Paris attacks was among 10 of the group's higher-ups killed in Syria and Iraq this month.

Baghdad-based US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said on Tuesday French national Charaffe el Mouadan was killed in a US-led coalition strike on December 24. 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.

Abaaoud was killed in a police raid in Paris five days after the November 13 attacks that left 130 people dead and hundreds more wounded in a series of coordinated attacks across the French capital.

A French source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP there was no immediate evidence showing Mouadan was involved in the Paris attacks.
But the official said Mouadan had been close to Samy Amimour, one of the suicide bombers who attacked the Bataclan music venue.

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 Mouadan used on Twitter and in Syria, but it's a common nickname and French investigators aren't sure the attacker was referring to Mouadan.

Among the other leaders killed this month was Abdel Kader Hakim, an "external operations facilitator" who was killed in Mosul, Iraq on December 26.
Warren said Hakim was a veteran militants 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.

And on December 10, Siful Haque Sujan, a Bangladeshi man who was educated in Britain and was allegedly an ISIL hacker, was killed near the ISIL stronghold of Raqa in Syria.

"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 ISIL leaders as:
-- Rawand Dilsher Taher, an "external operations facilitator," who was killed near Raqa

-- Khalil Ahmad Ali al-Wais, the ISIL "emir of Kirkuk province" in Iraq
-- Abu Anas, a roadside bomb expert who was killed near Kirkuk

-- Yunis Khalash, ISIL's "deputy financial emir" in Mosul
-- Mithaq Najim, ISIL's "deputy emir" in Kirkuk Province

-- Akram Muhammad Sa'ad Faris, an ISIL "commander and executioner," in Tal Afar, Iraq

-- Tashin al-Hayali, an "external operations facilitator," who was killed near Mosul in Iraq.