The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb was dropped by plane in Achin district on Thursday evening local time, the Pentagon said. It is Global Positioning System enabled and can target with smarter and improved accuracy.
But the group has been steadily losing ground in the face of heavy pressure both from U.S. air strikes and a ground offensive led by Afghan forces.
"The earth felt like a boat in a storm", one villager, who lives about 1.5 miles away from the blast, told the Guardian.
"We were all scared and my children and my wife were crying. We thought it had happened right in front of our house", he said.
Defending his decision to deploy the bomb, Gen. John Nicholson, top USA commander in Afghanistan, called Islamic State fighters "animals" for conducting attacks against targets like a hospital in Kabul.
The Trump administration's policy towards Afghanistan remains under consideration but the use of this weapon sends a powerful signal that IS is top of the administration's target list wherever its offshoots may be found.
Afghan officials said 36 militants were killed in the strike.
United States president Donald Trump called Thursday's operation a "very, very successful mission".
Afghanistan's ambassador to the US, Hamdullah Mohib, said the colossal MOAB was dropped after fighting had intensified over the last week.
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Fighting between Afghan forces and so-called ISIS militants has escalated in the past weeks, with numerous skirmishes and gunfights confirmed.
Shinwari described a litany of abuses he said were committed by IS fighters.
The region the MOAB struck butts up against the porous Pakistan border. According to reports, the attack was able to decimate a deep tunnel of ISIS group.
The strike was created to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. forces conducting clearing operations, while maximizing the destruction of ISIS fighters and facilities, said the U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, which is part of the NATO-led Resolute Support. "Precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties with this airstrike". The death toll from Thursday's attack was initially put at 36.
Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said no civilians were harmed in the massive blast that targeted the network of caves and tunnels, which had been heavily mined. The bomb had been in Afghanistan since January.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai posted scathing criticism of the USA military on Twitter Thursday, calling the operation a "brutal misuse of our country as [a] testing ground for new and risky weapons" and calling on Afghans "to stop" the United States. It has supported testing for universities, Caltrans, the U.S. Marshall's Service, the Department of Energy and many other government and private industry agencies, the statement said. The United States is also investigating two strikes in Iraq and Syria, which Iraqi officials and activists in Syria say killed dozens of civilians.
The militants have claimed responsibility for a number of high-profile attacks across Afghanistan, including the storming of a military hospital in Kabul last month that killed 50 people. But he raised questions over whether the bombing was going to help the larger strategy in Afghanistan, and said he wanted to learn if there were any.
The official also added that the use of the massive bomb had nothing to do with sending a message of the US' determination to any country, including North Korea.
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