The bomb's use has attracted enormous attention, but its aim in Thursday's attack was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel and cave complex used by Islamic State fighters in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.
The White House said it took precautions to prevent civilian casualties.
Thursday's strike came as US President Donald Trump dispatches his first high-level delegation to Kabul, amid uncertainty about his plans for the almost 9,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan. Nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs, reports indicate that it killed 36 ISIS fighters and there were no civilian casualties. The decision to drop the MOAB in eastern Afghanistan sends a clear message that the USA is committed and determined to defeating ISIS and other terror outfits in Afghanistan.
Achin District Governor Esmail Shinwari said: "The explosion was the biggest I have ever seen".
The GBU-43 bomb, weighing 21,600 lbs (9,797kg), is GPS-guided, contains 11 tonnes of explosives and is the United States military's largest non-nuclear device.
Nicholson said the "MOAB" ordnance - for Massive Ordnance Air Blast, or less formally, the "Mother of All Bombs" - was "designed to destroy caves and tunnels, which ISIS-K have been using, along with extensive belts of IEDs, to thicken their positions against our offensive".
Nicholson, the commander of the NATO-led Resolute Support force, discussed the operation Friday in a news conference in Kabul.
PMs' day out: Modi, Turnbull hold talks, take metro ride
Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia, on Monday said that talks with India on trade pact not as fast as desired. Malcolm Turnbull will turn his focus in India from trade to security on the second day of his visit to the subcontinent.
"We had persistent surveillance over the area before, during and after the operation, and now we have Afghan and USA forces on the site, and see no evidence of civilian casualties", Nicholson said.
The U.S. assessment is still in progress, a Pentagon official tells NPR's Tom Bowman, adding that there's a chance the death toll might include results from two other smaller operations against ISIS-K that took place Thursday night.
The top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said on Friday his decision to deploy one of the largest conventional bombs used in combat was done in communication with officials in Washington and was a purely tactical decision.
The military says it is still assessing the damage it has caused.
US President Donald Trump praised the US military for carrying out another "successful" mission, but was both vague and threatening when asked if the use of the weapon carried an implicit warning to North Korea.
He then backed China's president Xi Jinping to deal with his ally.
Comments