A SNIPER who fought with the Kurdish forces against ISIS has claimed he killed hundreds of the jihadis as he helped to stem their advance.
Azad Cudi travelled to Syria in 2013 to fight with the YPG forces after they came into conflict with ISIS following the outbreak of civil war in the country.
The 34-year-old has now written a book giving his account of how the Kurdish forces’ snipers held the blood thirsty terrorists at bay against impossible odds.
‘Long Shot: The Inside Story of the Snipers Who Broke ISIS’ focuses on the battle for the town Kobani, in northern Syria.
Cudi originally went to Syria to help as a social worker but soon volunteered to fight with the YPG.
In an extract released by his publisher, he writes that around 12,000 ISIS fighters attacked Kobani in 2014 and were faced by just 2500 men and women of the YPG.
The YPG are renowned for having mixed male and female units with women equal status when it comes to combat.
ISIS were equipped with artillery, mortars, tanks and heavy machine guns, writes Cudi.
Sniping – killing the invaders one by one – was one of the few tactics available to us
They also had mobile battle kitchens and surgeries, even social media managers and investment specialists to manage their trade in pillaged oil and artefacts, writes Cudi.
“We lacked the most basic equipment, right down to binoculars and radios, ate whatever we found in the kitchens of abandoned houses and armed ourselves with forty-year-old Kalashnikovs and a few boxes of ammunition.
“If surviving these odds was already a figurative long shot, our meagre tools ensured it would also require literal ones.
“Sniping – killing the invaders one by one – was one of the few tactics available to us.”
Cudi claims to have personally killed 250 ISIS fighters while a fellow sniper shot dead as many as 500.
If correct, then that surpasses the number of kills recorded by US Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, which was depicted in the film 'American Sniper'.
“I have often been asked how many we killed. I always refused to answer," says Cudi.
“Only a weak man would measure himself in kills. Only a fool would try to describe all the hate, loss, sacrifice and love in war with a number.
“If only to set the matter aside, let me say at the outset that in eight months, our snipers decimated them.
"Herdem killed 500, Hayri 350 and me 250, making more than a thousand between us.”
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Cudi is a British citizen born of Kurdish extraction born in Iran who fled the country when conscripted into the country’s army, according to the publisher's biography.
He was granted asylum and citizenship when he was 19 and learnt English before beginning work as a journalist for the Kurdish media.
In 2011, Azad was working for a television station in Stockholm when the Syrian civil war broke out and the Kurds established their autonomous enclave.
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