IS leader killed in air strike linked to 2 Paris attackers

Charaffe al Mouadan, an Islamic State leader killed by air strikes in Syria last week, was linked to at least two Paris attackers and had trained in a local shooting club with one of them, officials said on Wednesday. In another dimension of the investigation into the November 13 shooting and bombing rampage in Paris in which 130 people died, a source close to the inquiry confirmed a report that said at least one man was suspected of having coordinated the attacks from Belgium via mobile phone as they were being carried out. 

The disclosures helped flesh out a picture of the Paris attackers and how their operation unfolded, as well as of flaws in France’s surveillance and supervision of militant suspects. Al Mouadan, 26, was close to Paris attacker Samy Amimour, a 28-year-old former bus driver who blew himself up in Bataclan concert hall, the mayor of the Paris suburb where both grew up said. 

Both had plans to get to Yemen, a hotbed of Islamist militancy, in 2012 and subsequently left France for war-torn Syria in 2013, Drancy Mayor Jean-Christophe Lagarde said, adding that more should have been done to stop them.