French militant Jean-michel Clain killed in Syria: Wife

NEAR BAGHOUZ, Syria: The wife of French militant Jean-michel Clain said on Tuesday in Syria that her husband was killed last month after a coalition strike killed his brother Fabien, another notorious militant.

“The drone killed my brother-inlaw and then the mortar killed my husband,” Dorothee Maquere said at a screening area after exiting the IS group’s last pocket in Baghouz.

Fabien Clain, 41, gained notoriety after voicing an audio recording claiming responsibility for the November 2015 attacks in Paris, when IS men slaughtered 129 people in coordinated attacks at restaurants and bars around the French capital.

He was killed in a coalition drone strike last month in Baghouz, the village in eastern Syria where diehard IS fighters are making a bloody last stand.

His younger brother Jean-michel, 38, was wounded in the same February 20 coalition on Baghouz but survived, Maquere said. But he died in a mortar attack two days later.

She was speaking at a screening centre run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish-led force that has spearheaded the military operation against the last dreg of the IS “caliphate”.

She was among a group of several hundred civilians who exited the tiny besieged enclave, where a dwindling number of IS fighters were refusing to surrender.

Maquere was wearing a full black veil and was surrounded by her five surviving children. She lost three other children in bombardment.