In ‘incredible feat,’ Canadian sniper kills IS fighter from 2 miles away

A Canadian special forces sniper killed an Islamic State fighter in Iraq from 2.1 miles away, in what was feted as a new world military record for a confirmed kill from that distance, Canadian media reported on Thursday.

The shot, which took under 10 seconds to hit the target, thwarted jihadists from dropping a bomb on Iraqi forces, according to The Globe and Mail.

“This is an incredible feat. It is a world record that might never be equaled,” the paper quoted a military insider as saying.

The previous record, unchallenged since 2009, stood at 2,475 meters (1.5 miles) when British sniper Craig Harrison targeted a Taliban gunman. In 2002, another Canadian sniper, Rob Furlong, broke the record at 2,430 meters (1.5 miles).

“The Canadian Special Operations Command can confirm that a member of Joint Task Force 2 successfully hit a target at 3,540 meters [2.1 miles],” the elite forces said in a statement, according to the Canadian paper. “For operational security reasons and to preserve the safety of our personnel and our Coalition partners we will not discuss precise details on when and how this incident took place.”

The sniper used a McMillan TAC-50 rifle and fired from a high-rise building, according to the report. The incident was said to take place in the past month.

A military source told The Globe and Mail the “shot in question actually disrupted a Daesh [Islamic State] attack on Iraqi security forces.”

“Instead of dropping a bomb that could potentially kill civilians in the area, it is a very precise application of force and because it was so far way, the bad guys didn’t have a clue what was happening.”

Canadian forces are part of the US-led coalition to combat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.