Sounds like a rousing success.
KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghan officials say the US attack on a tunnel complex in eastern Afghanistan with the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat by the US military has left 36 Islamic State group fighters dead.
There were no civilian casualties, according to the Ministry of Defense statement, which also said several IS caves and ammunition caches were destroyed.
Hakim Khan, 50, a resident of Achin district where the attack took place, welcomed the attack on ISIS, saying: “I want 100 times more bombings on this group.”
The bomb, known officially as a GBU-43B, or massive ordnance air blast weapon, unleashes 11 tons of explosives.
“Last night’s bomb was really huge, when it dropped, everywhere, it was shaking,” one resident told Reuters. He characterized the strike as a “positive move” to rid the village of ISIS fighters. One man who lived two miles from the blast area told CNN “we were all scared and my children and my wife were crying. We thought it had happened right in front of our house.”
Afghan officials say 36 ISIS fighters were killed in the strike with no civilian casualties observed. The bomb destroyed ISIS’s weapons storage facilities along with underground tunnels used to evade U.S. drone strikes. The tunnels and weapons depots were pausing U.S. and Afghan operations to retake the district, prompting the bomb’s usage, top U.S. general in Afghanistan John Nicholson told reporters Friday.