ISIS leaders who planned Paris attacks killed in coalition air strikes in Syria – as they plotted ANOTHER terror atrocity in West
Bataclan planners Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou were killed in Raqqa alongside third terrorist Walid Hamman
A COALITION airstrike in Syria killed three ISIS leaders involved in plotting foreign attacks – including two who helped to bring about last year's attacks in Paris, the Pentagon said today.
Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou died in a targeted strike in the ISIS terror capital of Raqqa on December 4, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook announced.
The evil pair – who he said had a hand in organising the November 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people – were close associates of ISIS external operations leader Abu Mohammed al-Adnani, who was killed in August.
They two men were killed alongside a third terror planner, Walid Hamman.
Hamman had been convicted in absentia in Belgium for a disrupted 2015 planned attack.
All three were part of a network led by Boubaker al-Hakim, a Tunisian killed in an air strike last month.
And Cook revealed the sick trio had been working on a fresh plan to massacre innocent civilians before they were annihilated in the bombing.
He said: “The three were working together to plot and facilitate attacks against Western targets at the time of the strike.”
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Last year's devastating attacks in Paris saw suicide bombers and gunmen launch a coordinated assault across the French capital.
The bloodiest scenes were witnessed at the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people were killed by three attackers during a rock gig by Eagles of Death Metal.
Last month, the city held a solemn memorial – attended by survivors, politicians and members of the public – outside the venue to mark the one year anniversary of the massacre.
A US-led coalition has been striking ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
The campaign has helped to push the extremist group out of vast areas, leaving it desperately clinging to its two remaining power centres – Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.
But as well as forcing the militants into retreat on the battlefield, the bombing has also used intelligence to target the organisation’s top terrorists.
ISIS executioner Jihadi John was famously killed in an airstrike on Raqqa in November last year after murdering several hostages including two Brits in a number of grisly videos.
Even the group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was reported to have been hurt by bombing, although this was never officially confirmed.
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