Pentagon claims that it air raids have killed one of the plotters of the Paris attacks. The US said that the airstrikes have killed a French jihadi based in Syria who was linked to the chief planner of the Paris attacks by Isis and was at present “actively planning” new attacks.
The dead man was named as Charaffe al-Mouadan, a French national and is believed to have had a direct link to the Paris attack cell leader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Pentagon spokesman Col Steve Warren said. Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed on 24 December.
In line with pledges by the US president, Barack Obama, and other western leaders that terrorism would not go unpunished, this appears to be the first successful targeting of anyone directly linked to the deadliest attack on civilians in France since the second world war.
“Al-Mouadan was actively planning attacks against the west. We will hunt Isil [Isis] leaders working to inspire attacks against US and our allies. As long as Isil external attack planners are operating, the US military will hunt them and kill them,” Warren said.
Warren is the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led military operation against Isis.
Warren said that in the past one month, there have been deaths of ten mid-level Isil leaders in airstrikes on Syria and Iraq. The list included a UK-educated man who led some of Isis’s computer hacking programs.
On December 10, Siful Haque Sujan, a Bangladeshi, died in an airstrike near Raqqa in Syria.
“Sujan was an external operations planner who was educated as a computer systems engineer in the United Kingdom. He supported Isis’s hacking efforts, their anti-surveillance technology and their weapons development. Now that he’s dead, Isil has lost a key link between their networks,” he said.
While saying the there were no more details available about Sujan at this moment, Warren said that an Isis executioner and a forgery specialist were among the dead.
“We will continue to hunt Isil leaders who are working to recruit, plan and inspire attacks against the United States and our allies. We’re striking at the head of this snake. We haven’t severed the head of the snake yet, and it’s still got fangs. We have to be clear about that. There’s much more fighting to do,” he added.
Warren said that the effect of the airstrikes on the Isis leadership can be seen in recent battlefield successes against the group. The first major victory against the extremist Sunni militants was recorded by Iraqi army recently who managed to declare the successful capture of Ramadi this week. Ramadi is a provincial capital west of Baghdad which fell to Isis in May.
Terming the violence against Iraqi Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East as genocide, the US Democratic presidential candidate said: “I think I was asked this a couple months ago, and I said that term carries with it legal import, it is a very important concept and label for behaviour that deserves that name,” Clinton said in answer to a question at a meeting in Berlin, New Hampshire.
However neutralising leaders alone would not be enough to defeat Isis, warned analysts.
“With leaders it’s a deadly game of Whac-A-Mole: you kill one and others take their place. It’s a necessary but not sufficient part of any counter-terrorism strategy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to US secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
The dead man was named as Charaffe al-Mouadan, a French national and is believed to have had a direct link to the Paris attack cell leader, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, Pentagon spokesman Col Steve Warren said. Abdelhamid Abaaoud was killed on 24 December.
In line with pledges by the US president, Barack Obama, and other western leaders that terrorism would not go unpunished, this appears to be the first successful targeting of anyone directly linked to the deadliest attack on civilians in France since the second world war.
“Al-Mouadan was actively planning attacks against the west. We will hunt Isil [Isis] leaders working to inspire attacks against US and our allies. As long as Isil external attack planners are operating, the US military will hunt them and kill them,” Warren said.
Warren is the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, the US-led military operation against Isis.
Warren said that in the past one month, there have been deaths of ten mid-level Isil leaders in airstrikes on Syria and Iraq. The list included a UK-educated man who led some of Isis’s computer hacking programs.
On December 10, Siful Haque Sujan, a Bangladeshi, died in an airstrike near Raqqa in Syria.
“Sujan was an external operations planner who was educated as a computer systems engineer in the United Kingdom. He supported Isis’s hacking efforts, their anti-surveillance technology and their weapons development. Now that he’s dead, Isil has lost a key link between their networks,” he said.
While saying the there were no more details available about Sujan at this moment, Warren said that an Isis executioner and a forgery specialist were among the dead.
“We will continue to hunt Isil leaders who are working to recruit, plan and inspire attacks against the United States and our allies. We’re striking at the head of this snake. We haven’t severed the head of the snake yet, and it’s still got fangs. We have to be clear about that. There’s much more fighting to do,” he added.
Warren said that the effect of the airstrikes on the Isis leadership can be seen in recent battlefield successes against the group. The first major victory against the extremist Sunni militants was recorded by Iraqi army recently who managed to declare the successful capture of Ramadi this week. Ramadi is a provincial capital west of Baghdad which fell to Isis in May.
Terming the violence against Iraqi Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East as genocide, the US Democratic presidential candidate said: “I think I was asked this a couple months ago, and I said that term carries with it legal import, it is a very important concept and label for behaviour that deserves that name,” Clinton said in answer to a question at a meeting in Berlin, New Hampshire.
However neutralising leaders alone would not be enough to defeat Isis, warned analysts.
“With leaders it’s a deadly game of Whac-A-Mole: you kill one and others take their place. It’s a necessary but not sufficient part of any counter-terrorism strategy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former adviser to US secretaries of state on Arab-Israeli negotiations.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
