Iranian General Reportedly Killed By ISIS Sniper In Northern Iraq

A senior commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards was killed by a sniper's bullet in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra as he was training Iraqi troops and Shiite militiamen fighting militants of the self-declared Islamic State, Iran says.

Brig. Gen. Hamid Taqavi, who Reuters says was a veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, was killed by one or more snipers hiding behind a power transformer in Samarra, according to a Revolutionary Guard statement. Several others with him were wounded.

It said Taqavi "became a martyr while fulfilling his duty as a military adviser" in the fight against the Islamic State "terrorists."

He was on a mission in cooperation with the "Iraqi army and popular mobilization (forces) to counter the ISIL Takfiri militants in the vicinity of the shrine of (the eleventh Shia Imam) Hasan al-Askari (peace be upon him)," it said.

Iran's Press TV says: