In the image of death's “claws,” aẓfār does more than merely hint at a missing animal-name. It creates the imaginative impression of death as an entity that can seize and tear its prey.
The discussion of istiʿārah takhyīliyyah (imaginative metaphor) concerns such imaginative attribution. Actual bodily claws are not claimed to belong to death; the language dramatizes its overwhelming grip.
The device shares resemblance with simile, but the imagined property itself is not thereby an independent, formally expressed simile. This matters especially where one side appears only through the distinctive properties of the other.