PARIS — A high-profile French jihadist and Islamic State propagandist, Fabien Clain, who is believed to have recorded the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility for the November 2015 attacks in Paris, was killed by an airstrike in southeastern Syria, the American-led coalition said on Thursday.

“A Coalition strike killed an active Daesh media official named Abu Anas al Faransi, also known as Fabien Clain, in Baghouz,” the coalition said in a Twitter posting, using the Arabic name for the Islamic State.

Baghouz, also spelled Baghuz, is a village in the last bit of territory in Syria still held by the militant group.

It was unclear when Mr. Clain was killed, but he and his brother, Jean-Michel, were believed to have been targeted by an airstrike on Feb. 20. The defense minister of France, part of the coalition, called his death “possible” the next day. The fate of the brother remains unclear.

Mr. Clain, 41, narrated a six-minute audio recording produced by the Islamic State, claiming responsibility for the Nov. 13, 2015, attacks on Paris that killed 130 people and wounded more than 400. The recording, released the day after the attacks, included religious chanting by Mr. Clain’s brother.

The brothers also recorded several propaganda songs in French that were released by the Islamic State, or ISIS, urging people to commit terrorist attacks or to leave France for ISIS-controlled territories, according to the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“Advance, advance, never retreat, never surrender,” went the chorus to one released immediately after the Paris attacks.

A well-known figure who navigated French jihadi circles for 20 years, Fabien Clain was one of the most prominent foreign members of the Islamic State. Although the full extent of his influence within the group is not entirely clear, analysts said he played a significant role in spreading its messages to the French-speaking world.

“Those involved in communications were close to those in charge of preparing the attacks,” said Romain Caillet, an independent French expert on ISIS.

Mr. Clain’s death comes as France and other countries are assessing how to handle their citizens who joined the Islamic State but are now detained in makeshift camps in Syria by Kurdish forces, after President Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from the region.

A handful of jihadists who were close to the Clain brothers have been detained by Kurdish forces and could be repatriated to France within weeks, according to experts and government officials. Adrien Guihal and Thomas Barnouin, two high-profile Islamic State members who were also involved in its communications, are believed to be among them.

Others could be transferred to Iraq and face trial there. President Barham Saleh of Iraq said during a visit to France on Monday that 13 French citizens had been handed over by Syrian Kurdish forces in January.

The French authorities issued arrest warrants for the Clains in June of last year for their suspected involvement in the Paris attacks. Mr. Caillet said intelligence services had concluded that Mr. Clain’s role in the attacks was more significant than they had believed earlier.

Before the Clain brothers converted to Islam in the 1990s, they were obsessed with rap and wrote Christian hip-hop songs as teenagers, according to a 2016 article in Boudu, a local French magazine.

Investigators believe that they were radicalized in the early 2000s, when they switched to writing a cappella Islamic songs, known as anashid. They posted at least one to a Myspace page.

In the following years, they were part of the “Artigat cell,” named after the small town in southwestern France where a group of Muslims followed the extremist teachings of Olivier Corel, a Franco-Syrian preacher.

Mr. Caillet met Fabien Clain during that period, in Egypt, and described him as a “modest, affable individual open to debate.”

In Artigat, the Clains grew close to another prominent French jihadist, Abdelkader Merah, who was convicted in 2017 of being part of a criminal terrorist conspiracy. Mr. Merah’s younger brother, Mohamed, killed seven people in Toulouse in 2012, including four at a Jewish school, before the police killed him.

In January 2015, just before leaving for Syria, Fabien Clain bought $4,000 worth of music equipment, including a microphone, voice changing equipment and a license to Pro Tools, the music editing software, from a shop in Toulouse, according to French media reports.

“He was a ghost whose name could be found in almost all jihadi cases, a figure who fascinated the whole French jihadi sphere,” said Guillaume Denoix de Saint Marc, the president of the French Association of Victims of Terrorism, or A.F.V.T.

Mr. Denoix de Saint Marc said he would have preferred that Mr. Clain be captured and interrogated about his involvement in the Paris attacks.

“Fabien wasn’t very talkative, but his brother Jean-Michel usually had more to say,” said Chantal Anglade, an A.F.V.T. member whose daughter was wounded in a Cairo bombing in 2009, for which the Clain brothers were interrogated.

In 2009, Mr. Clain was sentenced to five years in prison for his role, as part of the Artigat cell, in recruiting radicalized people and sending them to Iraq. He was released in 2012 and is believed to have left for Syria to join the Islamic State around March 2015.

“He embodied jihadism with a capital J,” Ms. Anglade said. “We can’t be relieved about someone’s death, but we only have contempt for Mr. Clain.”

Rukmini Callimachi contributed reporting from New York, and Alex Marshall from London.

Follow Elian Peltier on Twitter: @ElianPeltier.

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