Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi planted the national flag in Ramadi
after the army retook the city center from Islamic State, a victory
that could help vindicate his strategy for rebuilding the military after
stunning defeats.
"Over the past month, we've killed 10 ISIL leadership figures with targeted air strikes, including several external attack planners, some of whom are linked to the Paris attacks," said U.S. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a spokesman for the U.S.-led campaign against the Islamist group also known by the acronym ISIL.
"Others had designs on further attacking the West."
One of those killed was Abdul Qader Hakim, who facilitated the
militants' external operations and had links to the Paris attack
network, Warren said. He was killed in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul
on Dec. 26.
Two days earlier, a coalition air strike in Syria killed Charaffe al
Mouadan, a Syria-based Islamic State member with a direct link to
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the coordinated bombings
and shootings in Paris on Nov. 13 which killed 130 people, Warren said.
Mouadan was planning further attacks against the West, he added.
Air strikes on Islamic State's leadership helped explain recent
battlefield successes against the group, which also lost control of a
dam on a strategic supply route near its de facto capital of Raqqa in
Syria on Saturday.
"Part of those successes is attributable to the fact that the
organization is losing its leadership," Warren said. He warned, however:
"It's still got fangs