Iraqi ‘sheikh sniper’ who claimed to have killed 320 IS fighters dies in battle
The grey-bearded marksman was widely known by comrades as ‘the sheikh of snipers’ or ‘hawk eye’
A veteran fighter known as “the sheikh of snipers” has been killed in Iraq’s battle to retake the town of Hawija from Islamic State, his paramilitary force announced.
Abu Tahsin al-Salhi, who took part in conflicts dating back to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war and said he had gunned down at least 320 IS jihadists, died on Friday.
He was killed as he advanced on Hawija in northwest Iraq, said Ahmad al-Assadi, spokesman for the Hashed al-Shaabi alliance mostly of Shiite militias fighting alongside government forces against the last jihadist bastions.
At his funeral on Saturday near the southern port city of Basra, close friend Ahmad Ali Hussein said the marksman was widely known by comrades as “the sheikh of snipers” or “hawk eye”.
A grey-bearded hulk of a man who drove an off-road motorbike and wore a black-and-white chequered scarf and fingerless mittens, Abu Tahsin was inseparable from his Austrian-manufactured Steyr rifle.