36 Islamic State fighters killed in U.S. strike in Afghanistan

The attack on a tunnel complex in remote eastern Afghanistan with the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the U.S. military left 36 Islamic State militants dead and no civilian casualties, Afghanistan officials said Friday.

The attack was carried out in a remote mountainous area of Nangarhar province near the Pakistan border where there had been heavy fighting in recent weeks between Afghan forces and IS militants. The Ministry of Defence said in a statement that several IS caves and ammunition caches were destroyed by the giant bomb, which terrified villagers on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border with its “earsplitting blast.”

The U.S. maintains over 8,000 troops in Afghanistan, training local forces and conducting counterterrorism operations. Over the past year they have largely concentrated on thwarting a surge of attacks by the Taliban, who have captured key districts, such as the Helmand province, which American and British troops had fought bitterly to return to the government. But on Friday, however, the U.S. military appeared entirely focused on the Islamic State group.

“This is the right weapon for the right target,” said U.S. Gen. John W. Nicholson, NATO commander in Afghanistan, at a news conference.

The bomb, known officially as a GBU-43B, or massive ordnance air blast weapon, unleashes 11 tons of explosives.

Gen. Daulat Waziri, spokesman for the Afghanistan Ministry of Defence, said 36 IS fighters were killed by the blast, and that the death toll could likely rise. He said the bombing was necessary because the tunnel complex was extremely hard to penetrate, with some as deep as 40 metres.

“It was a strong position and four times we had operations (attacking the site) and it was not possible to advance,” he said, adding that the road leading to the complex “was full of mines.”

Pakistani villagers living near the Afghan border said the explosion was so loud they thought a bomb had been dropped in their village by U.S. warplanes targeting terrorists in Pakistan.