The US military's largest non- nuclear bomb killed at least 36 terrorists as it decimated a deep tunnel complex of the Islamic State group, Afghan officials said.
As many as 36 suspected Islamic State militants were killed in Afghanistan when the United States dropped "the mother of all bombs," its largest non-nuclear device ever unleashed in combat, the Afghan Defence Ministry said on Friday.
The claims have not been independently verified, but ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said no civilians were harmed in Thursday's massive blast that targeted a network of caves and tunnels.
"No civilian has been hurt and only the base which Daesh used to launch attacks in other parts of the province, was destroyed," Waziri said in a statement, using an Arabic term for Islamic State, which has established a small stronghold in eastern Afghanistan and launched deadly attacks on the capital, Kabul.
A GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed 'Mother Of All Bombs', was dropped on a tunnel complex of ISIS-Khorasan, a regional affiliate of the terror group, in Achin district of Afghanistan's Nanagarh province, close to the border with Pakistan.
The bomb was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, operated by the Air Force Special Operations Command.
Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump said on Thursday that it was the first-ever combat use of the bomb. A MOAB is a 21,600- pound, GPS-guided munition that is America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb.
President Donald Trump has said the US military has been "successful" lately because his administration has given them "total authorisation", as he hailed the forces.
Trump said he authorised the use of the bomb in Afghanistan and called the mission "very, very successful".
"It was really another successful job, we are very proud of our military. We are so proud of our military, it was another successful event," Trump told reporters at the White House
"Everybody knows exactly what happened, what I do is I authorise our military. We have the greatest military in the world, they've done a job, as usual, so we have given them total authorisation and that's what they're doing, and frankly, that's why they've been so successful lately," he said.
"If you look at what's happened over the last eight weeks and you compare that to what's happened over the last eight years, you'll see there's a tremendous difference. So we have incredible leaders of the military and incredible military, and we are very proud of them, and this was another very very successful mission," Trump said.
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 "Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB)")
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