As many as 36 Islamic State terrorists were killed after the US dropped the GPS guided 9,500 kg GBU-43 bomb on tunnel and cave network of IS terrorists located in the Hindukush mountains.
Intelligence agencies are trying to ascertain if any Indian was killed in the Mother of All Bombs (MoAB) attack that sucked out life from tunnels and caves of Islamic State hideouts located in Afghanistan’s Achin district of Nangarhar province with devastating impact on Thursday evening.
As many as 36 Islamic State terrorists were killed after the US dropped the GPS guided 9,500 kg GBU-43 bomb on tunnel and cave network of IS terrorists located in the Hindukush mountains.
There are unconfirmed reports of one Murshid Muhammed, a native of Padna in Kasargod district of Kerala, getting killed in the US attack, said National Investigation Agency sources, who are trying to confirm the report and ascertain the fate of other people from Kerala, including two children and four women, who had left the state to join IS in June last year.
Assainar, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kasaragod district special branch, said that so far they have not got any confirmation on Murshid’s death.
“We came to know that Murshid’s family members have got a message through Telegram app about their son’s death in the drone attack,” he told DNA.
The information about Murshid’s death was received by his family through a message on the secured Telegram Messenger App but not from the usual source putting the family in doubt.
Police sources source said that the youths are in constant touch with family members and locals through the Telegram app. When a relative of the IS recruit met with an accident, he got the information first from a local and called his father who is in Padna to pass on the message.
Murshid, who was working in the United Arab Emirates, took leave to visit his home via Mumbai but he never turned up. He reached Kandahar in Afghanistan via Iran to join the IS-Khorasan module in based in Nangarhar province.
Earlier in February, another youth, Hafeesudheen Theke Koleth, also from Kasaragod and the same group of 21 Kerala youths was killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan.
NIA sources said they are trying to coordinate with the Afghan authorities to get more information on yesterday’s attack and the terrorists killed.
Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the Governor of Nangarhar province and a police commander, claimed claimed that 82 militants were killed and three tunnels had been destroyed.
Claiming that no civilians were killed in the precision attack, Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Gen John Nicholson, said on Friday that it was purely a tactical decision to use the GBU-43 bomb to obliterate a network of caves and deep tunnels that ISIS-Khorasan was using to move around the battlefield and hide.
He called the network an “obstacle” for Afghan and US forces in their bid to drive murderous ISIS members out of the region, adding: “This was the right weapon against the right target.”
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, however, posted scathing criticism of the US military on Twitter Thursday, calling the operation a “brutal misuse of our country as [a] testing ground for new and dangerous weapons” and calling on Afghans “to stop” the United States.
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