The biggest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat by the US military killed 36 militants in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Friday, and villagers in the remote, mountainous area described being terrified by the "earsplitting blast".
One of the largest USA military aircrafts, stationed in Afghanistan, dropped the 21,600 pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb (MOAB) that is also called the "Mother of All Bombs" on tunnels believed to be used by the ISIS's Khorasan module.
"At 7:32 p.m. local time today, U.S. Forces - Afghanistan conducted a strike on an ISIS-K tunnel complex in Achin district, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, as part of ongoing efforts to defeat ISIS-K in Afghanistan in 2017", U.S. Forces - Afghanistan said in a statement Thursday.
The office of President Ashraf Ghani said there was "close coordination" between the US military and the Afghan government over the operation, and they were careful to prevent any civilian casualties.
USA military officials estimate there are about 600 to 800 Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan, mostly in Nangarhar, but also in the neighboring province of Kunar. President Donald Trump called Thursday's operation a "very, very successful mission". He said a clearance operation to assess the site of the attack was continuing.
The region butts up against the porous Pakistan border.
Afghan officials say 36 ISIS fighters were killed in the strike.
The statement said it is the responsibility of Afghans, not the United States, to remove IS from the country.
"This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against (the Islamic State)", Gen. John Nicholson, the commander of USA forces in Afghanistan said in statement.
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"I was sleeping when we heard a loud explosion".
The use of the weapon in Thursday's attack was the first time it had been used in combat, and only the third time the United States had ever detonated one of the weapons, which cost $16 million apiece.
District Gov. Ismail Shinwari said there is no civilian property near the airstrike location.
Another Achin resident, Mohammad Hakim, voiced his approval for the strike, saying "We are very happy and these kinds of bombs should be used in future as well, so Daesh is rooted out from here", using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group.
The bomb's destructive power, equivalent to 11 tonnes of TNT, pales in comparison with the relatively small atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War Two, which had blasts equivalent to between 15,000 and 20,000 tonnes of TNT.
He said the USA had persistent surveillance over the area "before, during and after" the operation, and they see no evidence of civilian casualties.
But former President Hamid Karzai accused the United States of using Afghanistan as "a testing ground for new and risky weapons". The two militant movements are rivals of each other.
Associated Press writers Anwarullah Khan in Khar, Pakistan, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, and Maamoun Youssef in Cairo contributed to this report.
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