IS commander linked to Paris ringleader killed in Syria: Pentagon

An Islamic State leader with "direct" links to the alleged ringleader of the Paris attacks has been killed in an air strike in Syria as he was plotting additional attacks, the Pentagon has said.

Baghdad-based US military spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said on Tuesday that Charaffe al-Mouadan had been killed on 24 December.

"He was a Syrian-based ISIL member with a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Paris attacks cell leader," Warren said, using another acronym for IS.

Abaaoud was killed in a major police raid in northern Paris on 18 November, five days after the attacks that killed 130 people.

Mouadan "was actively planning additional attacks against the West," Warren added.

"Over the past month we've killed 10 [IS] leadership figures with targeted air strikes, including several external attack planners, some of whom are linked to the Paris attacks," he said.

Warren declined to say if France had been involved in the strike against Mouadan.

Mouadan, 26, was a French national and the son of Morocco-born parents, and the last of eight children. 

He grew up in the suburbs of Paris, and was arrested in October 2012 while getting ready to leave with two  friends for either Yemen or Afghanistan, via Somalia, a source close to the investigation told AFP.

He travelled to Syria mid-2013.

Among the other leaders killed in December was a Syria-based Bangladeshi man who was educated in Britain and was allegedly an IS hacker. Warren described another man as a forgery specialist with "links to the Paris attack network".

The AFP news agency quoted an unnamed French law enforcement official as saying there was no immediate evidence showing Mouadan was involved in the Paris attacks. 

The official said Mouadan had been close to Samy Amimour, one of the suicide bombers that attacked the Bataclan music venue, and he also knew Omar Ismail Mostefai, another one of the attackers.

A French anti-terrorism official separately contradicted the US claims, telling AFP that Mouadan was not known to have strong ties to Abaaoud.

Mouadan, 26, was the son of Morocco-born parents and the last of eight children.