AK 47 rifle designer Mikhail Kalashnikov dies

Mikhail Kalashnikov, the designer of the assault AK-47 rifle that has killed more people than any other firearm in the world, died on 23/12/2013 Monday at 94, in Izhevsk, the city where he lived 600 miles east of Moscow, according to the Russia news.

The automatic rifle he designed became one of the world's most familiar and widely used weapons. Its comparative simplicity made it cheap to manufacture, as well as reliable and easy to maintain.

Mikhail Kalashnikov was born on 10 November 1919 in western Siberia. In 1938, he was called up by the Red Army and his design skills were used to improve the effectiveness of weapons and equipment used by Soviet tank regiments.

He designed the machine gun after being asked by a fellow soldier and work on the AK47 was completed in 1947, and two years later the gun was accepted by the Soviet army.

Kalashnikov continued working into his late 80s as chief designer at the Izhevsk firm that first built the AK-47.