US airstrike in Syria kills Daesh leaders linked to Paris attack

A drone strike in Syria staged by the United States that took place last week killed two leaders linked to the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. The leaders belong to the ultra-hardline terror group.

“They were working together to plot and facilitate attacks on Western targets at the time of the strike,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told reporters.The U.S. military said the strike took place on Dec. 4 in Raqqa, the Daesh’s defacto capital in Syria.

The Pentagon named two of the militants as Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou and said both men were involved with facilitating the 2015 machinegun and suicide bomb attacks on the Bataclan music hall, Paris bars and restaurants, and the Stade de France soccer stadium.

The third man killed, Walid Hamman, was a suicide attack planner and French national who was convicted in absentia in Belgium for a plot disrupted in 2015, Davis told reporters.

The three men were killed when a drone aircraft fired on them as they were driving in a car together, Davis said. Daesh, which has controlled parts of Iraq and Syria in recent years, has lost territory this year to local forces in those countries supported by a U.S.-led coalition of air strikes and advisers.