From The National Post
The Canadian sniper team which killed an ISIL fighter at a record distance saved lives by stopping an enemy attack in its tracks, Canada’s top general, Jonathan Vance, said Friday in an interview.Read more: http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/a-helluva-shot-canadas-top-soldier-lauds-record-breaking-sniper/wcm/4f3a1297-a133-4477-bf50-9890a1f3f245“The guys were sitting back and overwatching a difficult operation and saw that the Iraqis were going to get ambushed. They were about to get hit hard,” Vance told the National Post. “That shot, coming from more than three-and-a-half kilometres away so surprised the ambush that (ISIL) had no idea where it came from. It collapsed their ability to carry out the ambush. If that shot had not occurred, the Iraqis would have been badly mauled.”
NDP leader Tom Mulcair has written to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying that the sniper team’s actions raised new questions about the Liberal government’s pledge that troops from Canada’s secretive Joint Task Force 2 would not become involved in combat in Iraq.
For many months the Canadians have been training the Kurdish forces fighting ISIL, but have also recently begun to assist and mentor Iraqi regular forces involved in the assault of the western Iraqi city of Mosul.
Though not addressing Mulcair’s comment specifically, Vance said what the sniper and the observer who worked alongside him had done “was consistent with our rules of engagement to protect ourselves and defend those we are working with.
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