Almost 100 dead bodies have been pulled from Islamic State caves targeted Thursday by the largest non-nuclear bomb in the USA military's arsenal, Afghan military officials told The Wall Street Journal.
"The number of IS militants killed in the USA bomb in Achin district jumped to 94, including four commanders", Nangarhar provincial spokesman Attaullah Khogiani told CNN.
A Ministry of Defence official said on Friday that the number of dead could rise as officials assessed the bomb site in Achin district.
Security experts say ISIS had built their redoubts close to civilian homes, but the government said thousands of local families had already fled the area in recent months of fighting.
A GBU-43B, or massive ordnance air blast (MOAB) weapon. MOAB, also known as the 'mother of all bombs, ' is the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in any combat and had been in Afghanistan since January.
"This was the first time that we encountered an extensive obstacle to our progress", he said of a joint Afghan-US operation that has been targeting Islamic State since March.
Afghan and USA forces were at the scene of the strike and reported that the "weapon achieved its intended objective,", Nicholson said.
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President Ashraf Ghani threw his support behind the bombardment, saying it was "designed to support the efforts of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and United States forces conducting clearance operations in the region".
The United States, as part of its counterterrorism mission in Afghanistan, has been helping Afghan forces battle the local ISIS branch known as Islamic State-Khorasan Province since previous year.
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai on Saturday criticized both the Afghan and USA governments for the attack in Nangarhar.
"All victims of the attack were innocent civilians including women and children", said Zwak.
The attack was aimed to curb the rising threat of ISIS-K in Afghanistan, according to the US Central Command (USCENTCOM). The 11 died in a blast in Nawa district when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
Also on Saturday, Khogyani said a district leader and three others were wounded when their vehicle was targeted by a bomb.
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