Massive US bomb killed 36 Islamic State fighters
KABUL, Afghanistan — The biggest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat by the U.S. military killed 36 militants in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Friday, and villagers 20 miles away in neighboring Pakistan described being terrified by the “earsplitting blast.”
The strike using the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, was carried out Thursday morning against an Islamic State tunnel complex carved into the mountains that Afghan forces have tried to assault repeatedly in recent weeks in fierce fighting in Nangarhar province, Afghan officials said.
U.S. and Afghan forces have been battling the Taliban insurgency for more than 15 years. But the U.S. military brought out the biggest conventional bomb in its arsenal for the first time to hit the Islamic State, which has a far smaller but growing presence in Afghanistan.
That apparently reflects President landscape. Agricultural terraces are visible in the footage, but no population centers are.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said the bomb destroyed several Islamic State caves and ammunition caches.
Gen. Daulat Waziri, a ministry spokesman, said 36 Islamic State fighters were killed, and the death toll is likely to rise.
The Islamic State’s Aamaq news agency denied that any of its fighters were killed or wounded, citing a source within the group.
Waziri said some tunnels in the complex were more than 130 feet deep, and it “was full of mines.”
“This was the right weapon for the right target,” said U.S. Gen. John W. Nicholson, NATO commander in Afghanistan, at a news conference. He added that there were no reports of civilian casualties.
Pakistani villagers living near the frontier said the explosion was so loud they thought a bomb had been dropped in their village by U.S. warplanes targeting militants in Pakistan.
The U.S. estimates that 600 to 800 Islamic State fighters are in Afghanistan, mostly in Nangarhar. The U.S. has more than 8,000 troops in Afghanistan training local forces and conducting counterterrorism operations, and it has concentrated on fighting Islamic State militants while also supporting Afghan forces against the Taliban.
The Site Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist organizations, reported Friday on a statement from the Afghan Taliban that condemned the U.S. for its “terrorist” attack. The statement said it is the responsibility of Afghans, not the U.S., to remove Islamic State from the country. The two militant movements are rivals.