Story highlights A US-led coalition airstrike killed three ISIS leaders in Syria

The ISIS leaders targeted were plotting attacks against the West

(CNN) Three ISIS leaders were killed last week by a coalition airstrike in ISIS' self-declared capital, Raqqa, Syria, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Two of the targets, Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou, were directly involved in plotting the November 13, 2015, Paris attacks, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said in a statement. The third, Walid Hamam, was a suicide attack planner who was convicted in absentia in Belgium for a terror plot disrupted last year.

Hamam was given a five-year sentence for being part of the terrorist network of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks. Previously, Abaaoud had coordinated a gun and bomb plot being hatched in Belgium that was thwarted by a Belgian commando raid in the eastern town of Verviers in January 2015.

While the plot was being developed, Hamam was part of an ISIS logistical cell in Athens that assisted Abaaoud and made arrangements for operatives to return to Europe to launch attacks as well as for militants to travel to Syria, according to court documents obtained by the Paris-based Center for the Analysis of Terrorism and shared with CNN.

Read More