One of France’s most wanted jihadis is thought to have been killed in a US air strike near the Islamic State-controlled city of Mosul in Iraq, both the Pentagon and social media channels used by the Islamic State (IS) group have confirmed, reports The Independent.
Rachid Kassim, born in Roanne in 1987 to an Algerian mother and Yemeni father, was a high profile recruiter for the extremist group, encouraging attacks and linking up radicalised teenagers via his Telegram and Facebook accounts.
The French authorities suspect him of coordinating the 2016 knife killings of a French police officer and his wife in their home, and the beheading of a priest. He has been connected to several other failed plots.
An audio recording which appears to have been made in December, designed to be released after his death spread through social media channels late on Wednesday. In the message, Kassim says he has been asked to carry out a suicide attack, but condemns IS leaders for sending their men to the front lines, while not volunteering for fighting or suicide missions themselves.
He also implores fellow fighters to treat the wives of those killed in action better.
In July last year - just after the Bastille Day attack in Nice which killed 86 people - Kassim appeared in a propaganda video in which he beheaded a captive and called for more attacks against French citizens.
“A lot of us are jealous of brothers who attack in dar ul-kufr [non Muslim countries],” he told Jihadology, a blog which tracks Islamic extremism, in November.
“We believe that even a small attack in dar ul-kufr is better than a big attack in Syria. As the door of hijrah [migration] closes, the door of jihad opens. If I stayed in dar ul-kufr, I would do an attack there.”
The fighter was the target of a US coalition strike near Mosul in northern Iraq last week, the Pentagon said on Friday.
Both the US and French sources have since confirmed that Kassim was killed in the February 8th strike. French media said DNA matching the fighter's was recovered from a truck hit in the drone strike.
In Paris, a high-ranking official involved in counter-terror operations told AFP there was not “absolute confirmation” of his death, but that the probability was high.