Tag: Snipers
British Sniper Kills Six Taliban With Single Shot
British Sniper Kills Six Taliban With Single Shot: Hit suicide bomber’s explosive vest from half a mile.
Achievement unlocked!
A British sniper in Afghanistan killed six Taliban insurgents with a single shot from his rifle.
The unidentified 20-year-old Lance Corporal made the 930-yard shot in Kakaran last December during a gun battle with 15 to 20 insurgents. He fired a single round from his L115A3 rifle, striking the trigger device of a suicide bomber, killing the bomber and five other nearby Taliban, Telegraph reports.
Lt. Col. Richard Slack, commanding officer of 9/12 Royal Lancers, recounted the event.
“The guy was wearing a vest. He was identified by the sniper moving down a tree line and coming up over a ditch,” said Slack. “He had a shawl on. It rose up and the sniper saw he had a machine gun. They were in contact and he was moving to a firing position. The sniper engaged him and the guy exploded. There was a pause on the radio and the sniper said, ‘I think I’ve just shot a suicide bomber.’ The rest of them were killed in the blast.”
The sniper is said to have averted mass casualties, as a second suicide bomb vest packed with 44 pounds of explosives was discovered nearby.
The same sniper earlier killed a Taliban machine-gunner from 1,465 yards. It was the first round he fired during the course of his tour.
The Most Deadly Sniper in American History
A young cowboy from Texas who joined the elite US Navy Seals became the most deadly sniper in American history. In a book published this month he provides an unusual insight into the psychology of a soldier who waits, watches and kills.
As US forces surged into Iraq in 2003, Chris Kyle was handed a sniper rifle and told to watch as a marine battalion entered an Iraqi town.
A crowd had come out to greet them. Through the scope he saw a woman, with a child close by, approaching his troops. She had a grenade ready to detonate in her hand.
“This was the first time I was going to have to kill someone. I didn’t know whether I was going to be able to do it, man, woman or whatever,” he says.
“You’re running everything through your mind. This is a woman, first of all. Second of all, am I clear to do this, is this right, is it justified? And after I do this, am I going to be fried back home? Are the lawyers going to come after me saying, ‘You killed a woman, you’re going to prison’?”
But he didn’t have much time to debate these questions.
“She made the decision for me, it was either my fellow Americans die or I take her out.”
He pulled the trigger.
Kyle remained in Iraq until 2009. According to official Pentagon figures, he killed 160 people, the most career sniper kills in the history of the US military. His own estimate is much higher, at 255 kills.
According to army intelligence, he was christened “The Devil” by Iraqi insurgents, who put a $20,000 (£13,000) bounty on his head.
Married with two children, he has now retired from the military and has published a book in which he claims to have no regrets, referring to the people he killed as “savages”.
American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History
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