Americanmilitarynews.com reports: It is believed to be the first time the machine gun was used in an SAS sniper shot.

The bullet struck the jihadi’s chest, tearing off his arm and shoulder, and killing him instantly, the report said.

The commander was on the U.S. and British militaries’ kill list.

He stood in place while briefing fighters for approximately 20 minutes. Once they realized what happened, they ran away.

“The sniper knew he only had one chance. It took several seconds for the round to hit the commander who appeared to fly into several pieces. For a few seconds no one moved. When they realized what had happened they got up and ran away,” a source said.

The kill is believed to have saved more than 20 lives.

The sergeant is said to be a veteran of Iraq and Syria. He was conducting secret patrols of a northern Afghanistan region controlled by ISIS.

Although the SAS patrol was equipped with sniper rifles, they determined that only the .50 caliber machine gun was powerful enough to hit the target from such a distance.

The gun, a .50 caliber Browning, is nearly 40 years old. It was mounted on an Army vehicle and affixed with a special sight.

A spotter estimated the wind speed, while the sergeant’s calculations accounted for “the heat of the day and the light,” a source said, according to the Daily Mail. Due to the extreme heat radiating from the ground, the target appeared blurry in the sergeant’s sights.

He was given the green light to take the shot by a senior officer at the Joint Special Operations Command headquarters in Kabul.

The machine gun is being decommissioned and will be displayed at the SAS headquarters in Hereford.