Sniper May Have Made Longest Kill Shot in History

A Canadian sniper in Iraq appears to have taken a shot for the ages. The Globe and Mail reports that a still-unidentified member of the nation's elite forces killed an Islamic State militant from a distance of 3,540 meters, which translates to a little more than 2 miles. If the account is verified—and it was apparently documented on video—it would best the previous longest kill made by a British sniper in 2009 of 2,475 meters. The gunman used a McMillan TAC-50, which Newsweek notes is the standard rifle among Canada's well-regarded snipers, and took the shot from a high-rise building in an unspecified locale in Iraq. The Globe and Mail spoke to multiple military sources who knew about the shot.

“It is at the distance where you have to account not just for the ballistics of the round, which change over time and distance, you have to adjust for wind, and the wind would be swirling,” one expert tells the Globe and Mail. In fact, at that distance, the shooter would also have to account for the curvature of the earth, he adds. One military source says the sniper "disrupted a Daesh (ISIS) attack on Iraqi security forces." Canadian forces in Iraq have been assisting Kurdish fighters battling ISIS, enough so that ISIS has called for retaliatory attacks in Canada. (More sniper stories.)