Middle East

French Terrorist Jean Michel Clain killed in Mortar attack

Prominent French militant Jean-Michel Clain has been killed as US-backed and Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are fighting to retake the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group’s last enclave in the eastern Syrian province of Dayr al-Zawr.

Clain’s wife Dorothee Maquere told AFP on Tuesday that he was killed in mortar shelling less than two weeks ago.

Maquere, fully veiled in black and surrounded by her five children, added that her husband had earlier been wounded when the US-led coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group carried out a drone strike against the besieged village of Baghouz near the Iraqi border on February 20.

“The drone killed my brother-in-law (Fabien) and then the mortar killed my husband,” she said as she was cradling her two-week-old baby under a red blanket at a screening area run by SDF militants.

Fabien Clain, 41, achieved notoriety after he claimed responsibility for a series of violent attacks targeting cafes and a concert hall in the French capital city of Paris on November 13, 2015, which took the lives of at least 129 people.

While Fabien was regarded as a senior propagandist for Daesh terror group, his younger brother Jean-Michel, 38, was mostly known as a singer of the “nasheed” chants heard on some of the videos released by the Takfiris.

Maquere said she did not regret moving from southwestern France with her family four years ago.

She said she wanted nothing from France and did not wish to return there but wanted to remain in Syria.

“I want to continue to live here with my children, to rebuild myself. I want to be left alone after everything I’ve been through… some place where I can live, where I won’t be bothered, where I can live my life,” Maquere said.

She also said she thought Hayat Boumedienne, the widow of Paris Kosher market gunman Amedy Coulibaly, was also killed recently in Baghouz.

Malian-born Coulibaly took hostages at a Jewish supermarket on the edge of Paris on January 8, 2015. Four hostages were killed before French elite forces stormed the shop and gunned the militant down. His wife had travelled to Syria a few days earlier.

As foreign-backed militancy erupted in Syria in March 2011, thousands of people streamed toward the Arab country from around the world to fight alongside militants there, with a particularly strong influx from European countries, including France.

Foreign nationals could buy budget tourist flights to Turkey and then sneak across the border.

As many as 1,910 French citizens joined Daesh, according to statistics from the Soufan Center, a US-based think tank, The Washington Post reported.

France has been exploring how to return its nationals who fought alongside Daesh and their families seeking to return from combat zones in Iraq and Syria, as well as those who surrendered and are in detention. France is a leading member of the US-led coalition purportedly fighting Daesh in Syria.

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