“In ferocious close-contact, street-to-street fighting, [rebels] took a central residential complex about a mile and half (3km) inside the city,” telegraph.co.uk reports, from the battle for Sirte, Libya. “The fighters are heading for the main street in the city centre, about half a mile away. Men hunkered on the pavement behind a low wall, taking cover from incoming sniper rounds. Bullets hissed overhead, pinging against gum trees that lined what was once a sleepy neighbourhood. Rifle butts pointing through the street railings, gunmen shot in the direction of the sniper fire.” [h/t to Todd Vendermeis]

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15 COMMENTS

  1. Well it’s obvious…the gaggle of photographers surrounding (the one lone rebel) were cut from the photo.

  2. Let see,

    no stock to shoulder contact

    No cheek weld

    No proper eye relief

    No rest

    all on a SVD sniper rifle, no wonder they can’t hit shit.

    He is probable squinting because he is having a hard time seeing the reticle, due to his improper eye relief, and therefor has a sight picture about the size of the pea.

    You can’t fix stupid. It’s amazing they even know how to load a magazine.

    • No, I found some spent 7.62x54R brass at the range that is made of some sort of copper-steel alloy. Its copper in color and attracts a magnet, but not nearly as strongly as real steel cased ammo.

      • The soviets and chicoms used to make copper-cased ammo due to unavailability of tin, so those are most likely russian surplus rounds.

        • Copper-washed steel, to be more precise.

          Plainly those casings aren’t all or even mostly from his rifle, since there’s bits of belt there… PKM, perhaps?

  4. i think its PSL rifle, look at the pattern on the magazine. Aside from this Todd is right on the money. I think the squinting is him flinching when the rifle fires, 7×62.54r has some recoil, but its not THAT bad. This guy looks like he thinks he’ shooting a 50 cal.

    http://www.dragunov.net/romanian_psl.html.

  6. He seems to think the magazine/receiver constitute a fore-grip. Just a little more and the thumb is over the ejection port.

  7. And what’s with the purple prose? Hey, Telegraph, this ain’t the Battle of Stalingrad. This is a bunch of half-assed gang bangers fighting over turf.

  8. The picture is obviously posed. The brass in the fore-ground is weathered (as it has been exposed to the weather for weeks). Also, mixed in the weathered brass are links for a belt-fed weapon (not the AK-style weapon in the photo). Considering the way the shooter is holding the weapon, it would be reasonable to say that the shooter was unfamiliar with weapons in general and completely untrained with this weapon in particular.

    My guess is that the person in the photo is the guide/translator for the press and was the ‘best looking/best dressed’ of the available ‘rebels’ to be posed for the photo-op. I also suspect that the weapon was selected by the photographer as the ‘best-looking/scariest-looking’ assault weapon in the immediate area.

  9. Commie in Stalingrad, “democrat” in Libya, all the same proletarian impulse. We all know that “sniper” is an abused term in the media. It’s not “sniper” fire if you can repeatedly dodge it.

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