District of Columbia: US forces operating in Syria have killed a senior member of the Islamic State group blamed for an attack on a nightclub that left 39 dead, officials said Friday.


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"We will reach you anywhere," Brett McGurk, the US diplomat who coordinates the coalition fighting the jihadist group in Iraq and Syria, said in a tweet confirming the death.

Officials identified the slain militant as Abdurakhmon Uzbeki, and described him as a close associate of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the Islamic State`s self-declared "caliphate."

They said he helped coordinate the movement and funding of foreign fighter cells, and was behind the January 1 gun attack on revellers at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul.

He is said to have been killed on April 6 in Mayadin, a town on the Euphrates river near Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, in an area that is regularly targeted by coalition air strikes.