Islamic State group leaders killed in airstrikes, U.S. official says

Two suspects had links to network believed responsible for November Paris attacks

WASHINGTON— U.S.-led forces have killed two Islamic State operatives in Syria and Iraq believed to have links to the gunmen who killed 130 people in Paris last month, a U.S. military official in Iraq said Tuesday.

The suspects, identified as Charaffe al Mouadan and Abdul Qader Hakim, were among 10 Islamic State figures, most of whom were mid-level leaders, reported killed in targeted airstrikes over the past month.

Al Mouadan had been in direct contact with the suspected ringleader of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a Belgian national of Moroccan descent, U.S. army Col. Steve Warren said in a news briefing from Baghdad.

He was “actively planning additional attacks against the West” and was killed in an airstrike over Syria on Thursday, Warren told reporters.

Warren’s announcement came as Belgian authorities said they had arrested two men in connection with a suspected plot involving attacks during the holiday season in Brussels. They said the plans involved attacks similar to those that hit Paris Nov. 13.

The arrests followed searches on Sunday and Monday in the Brussels and Liège regions, as well as Flemish Brabant, that uncovered militarystyle training uniforms and propaganda materials from the Islamic State group. No weapons or explosives were found, the prosecutor’s office said.

French news reports, citing unidentified law enforcement officials, identified al Mouadan as a French national of Moroccan descent who grew up in the poor Paris suburbs and was 26 years old.

He had been arrested in October 2012 with two friends, including Samy Amimour, one of the three gunmen at the Bataclan concert hall in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. They were charged with “criminal association in view of preparing acts of terrorism.” Amimour was killed by police in Paris.

At the time, the trio was believed to be plotting to travel to Yemen or Afghanistan to take part in violent jihad, according to the French newspaper Le Parisien.

A French counterterrorism official told Agence France-Presse news agency that al Mouadan was not known to have strong ties to Abaaoud, who was killed in a police raid on an apartment on the northern outskirts of Paris five days after the attacks.

Hakim, a veteran fighter and forgery specialist, was also part of an Islamic State external operations group that enables attacks against the West, according to the Pentagon.

He had links to the Paris attack network and was killed Saturday in an airstrike on the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Warren said.