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ISIS flagReuters

The Pentagon confirmed on Saturday that the United States-led military coalition has killed a leader of the Islamic State (ISIS) jihadist group in Syria who is linked with the terror attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris in January of 2015.

"Coalition warplanes targeted and killed Tunisian Boubaker al-Hakim, in Raqa, Syria" on November 26, Pentagon spokesman Ben Sakrisson said in a statement emailed to AFP.

"Al-Hakim was an ISIL leader and longtime terrorist with deep ties to French and Tunisian Jihadist elements," he added, using an alternate acronym for ISIS.

The 33-year-old Al-Hakim was suspected of involvement in extremist attacks against Tunisian political leaders in 2013, Sakrisson said.

"His removal degrades ISIL's ability to conduct further attacks in the West and denies ISIL a veteran extremist with extensive ties," he added.

Hakim's death also "denies the Islamic State a key figure with extensive historical and current involvement in facilitation and external operations and degrades their ability to conduct terror attacks around the world," the statement read.

The official confirmation of al-Hakim's death comes after it was announced on December 2 on the Twitter account of a Syrian group of opponents to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Born in Paris, al-Hakim first fought for Al-Qaeda in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 before joining ISIS.

He was sentenced to seven years in prison in Paris in 2008 for his part in a drive to send young jihadists from France to Iraq. He was released in early 2011.

His network included Cherif Kouachi, one of two brothers who carried out the attack on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 that killed 12 people.

That attack was followed by an attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris, where Islamist gunman Amedy Coulibali murdered four Jews.

AFP contributed to this report.