A U.S. drone strike in Syria last week killed two Islamic State leaders linked to the Nov. 13, 2015 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people as well as a third militant convicted in absentia in Belgium for a disrupted plot, the Pentagon said on Tuesday.
The U.S. military said the strike took place on Dec. 4 in Raqqa, the Islamic State's defacto capital in Syria.
"They were working together to plot and facilitate attacks on Western targets at the time of the strike," Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis told reporters.
The Pentagon named two of the militants as Salah Gourmat and Sammy Djedou and said both men were involved with facilitating the 2015 machinegun and suicide bomb attacks on the Bataclan music hall, Paris bars and restaurants, and the Stade de France soccer stadium.
The third man killed, Walid Hamman, was a suicide attack planner and French national who was convicted in absentia in Belgium for a plot disrupted in 2015, Davis told reporters.
The three men were killed when a drone aircraft fired on them as they were driving in a car together, Davis said.
Islamic State, which has controlled parts of Iraq and Syria in recent years, has lost territory this year to local forces in those countries supported by a U.S.-led coalition of air strikes and advisers. Islamic State sympathizers around the world have carried out other shootings and bombings of civilians.
Three Syrian men have been arrested in Germany on suspicion of being sent by so-called Islamic State (IS) to launch attacks, prosecutors say.
The men - aged between 17 and 26 - were detained after a series of pre-dawn raids in the states of Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony on Tuesday.
Later, Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told journalists the suspects may have had links to the men who attacked Paris in November last year.
He called the three a sleeper cell.
The Federal Public Prosecutor's office has said no concrete missions or orders have so far been found, despite the seizure of "extensive material".
The men - identified only as Mahir al-H, 17, Ibrahim M, 18, and Mohamed A, 26 - are said to have travelled through Turkey and Greece on false passports.
Investigators believe they had volunteered for the alleged mission, and that the 17-year-old had been trained in handling weapons and explosives in Raqqa, IS's stronghold in Syria.
They received fake passports, mobile phones loaded with a pre-installed communication programme and four-figure cash sums in US dollars.
Spate of attacks
The men were arrested when 200 police and security officers raided six locations, including three refugee shelters.
Investigations so far suggest the three came to Germany in November 2015 with the intention of "carrying out a previously determined order [from IS] or to await further instructions", prosecutors said in a statement.
Suspicions of the men were first raised months ago, and the men had been under surveillance including phone-tapping for weeks, reported the German news agency DPA.
Image copyrightAFPImage captionInterior Minister Maiziere says the three men arrested in Germany could be linked to those behind the attacks on Paris's Stade de France last November
At a news conference, Mr Maiziere said they were trafficked into Europe by the same organisation that supported the three men who blew themselves up outside the Stade de France national football stadium in Paris on 13 November.
A bystander also died - one of the total of 130 people killed in a series of co-ordinated attacks that night.
The battle to ease rising concerns - BBC's Jenny Hill in Berlin
These arrests come as ministers try to reassure a nervous German public that the arrival of more than a million asylum seekers has not put the country in danger. There is a febrile national debate here around integration and domestic security which will dominate campaigning ahead of next year's general election.
The security services have long suspected that IS is using the refugee crisis to infiltrate Germany. The country's interior minister has now acknowledged that is likely. But he was at pains to point out that the authorities are investigating a relatively small number of suspects among the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals, and to emphasise that the security services investigate every intelligence lead.
The German authorities are no doubt pleased to have broken what they are describing as a sleeper cell. But the arrests will most likely simply increase public concern.
Over one week in July, 10 people were killed and dozens more wounded in separate gun, bomb, axe and machete attacks in the south of the country.
Islamic State appeared to play a role in two of those attacks, by asylum seekers in Wuerzburgand Ansbach. In both cases, the attackers were killed.
Tuesday's arrests are likely to be welcomed by ministers who are trying to reassure Germans that they can keep the country safe, our correspondent adds.
A terror suspect arrested in Belgium on Friday has admitted being the "man in the hat" seen with the suicide bombers at Brussels airport, prosecutors say.
They say Mohamed Abrini told investigators that he was at the scene of the 22 March bombings.
Abrini is also wanted in connection with the attacks in Paris that killed 130 people last November.
He is one of six men arrested in Brussels on Friday. Four have been charged with terror offences.
The attacks at Zaventem airport and a metro station in Brussels left 32 people dead.
Officials believe those who carried out the Brussels and the Paris attacks were part of the same network backed by so-called Islamic State.
Abrini, a 31-year-old Belgian of Moroccan origin, confessed that he was the "man in the hat" after being confronted with the evidence, the federal prosecutor said in a statement.
"He said that he threw away his jacket in a rubbish bin and sold his hat after the attack," the statement added.
Abrini's fingerprints and DNA were found in two "safe houses" in Brussels, as well as in a car used during the Paris attacks, investigators said earlier.
Media captionVideo shows Belgium terror suspect's arrest
The other suspects charged on Saturday were named as Osama K, Herve BN, and Bilal EM.
They are all accused of "participating in terrorist acts'' linked to the Brussels bombings. Two other people arrested on Friday have been released.
Osama K, identified in media reports as Swedish national Osama Krayem, was the man seen with the suicide bomber at Malbeek metro station just before the attack on 22 March, investigators say.
They also say that he bought bags used by the two bombers who struck at Zaventem airport on the same day.
Image copyrightBelgian policeImage captionAbrini was captured on CCTV (R) at a service station at Ressons in northern France while driving a car with Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam
Osama K is believed to have entered Greece from Syria with migrants last year, using a fake Syrian passport. Prosecutors believe he was driven from Germany to Belgium by Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in October.
Herve BM, described as a Rwandan national, and Bilal EM are both suspected of having offered assistance to Abrini and Osama K.
Abrini is thought to have been filmed at a petrol station with Abdeslam two days before the attacks in Paris in November.
Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national of Moroccan descent, was detained in Brussels in March, days before the attacks in the Belgian capital.
The latest charges follow days of arrests and raids in Brussels.
On Saturday, heavily-armed police carried out a search in the Etterbeek area of Brussels. The target was a flat which police believe may have been used as a safe house by the militants.
