A day after the United States dropped the largest non-nuclear weapon it has ever used in combat, us military helicopters pounded a mountainside village in eastern Afghanistan on Friday in an ongoing operation against fighters loyal to Islamic State.
Several IS caves and ammunition caches were destroyed by the bomb, which is known officially as a GBU-43B.
According to CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen, "the war in Afghanistan is at its lowest point for the Afghans and their American allies since the Taliban were overthrown in the months after 9/11".
"The strike was created to minimize the risk to Afghan and USA forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities", the Pentagon said on Thursday of the strike.
The strike hit a system of tunnels and caves that Daesh fighters had used to "move around freely, making it easier for them to target United States military advisers and Afghan forces" nearby, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said.
Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump said the bomb had been brought to Afghanistan "some time ago" for potential use.
Achin, an agricultural district with a majority ethnic Pashtun population, was once home to roughly 90,000 people, according to Afghanistan's Central Statistics Office. He said there has been heavy fighting in the area in recent weeks between Afghan forces and ISIS militants. He said Afghan forces were at the tunnel complex assessing the damage. He said the bombing was necessary because the fortification was extremely hard to penetrate, with tunnels as deep as 40 metres.
Bill Riggio, of the Foundation for Defence of Democracies think tank, described how the MOAB, a precision weapon used on softer targets, such as cave systems, works.
Another militant source told AFP that 800 to 1,000 IS fighters were believed to be hiding in the area, which borders Pakistan. "It was an earsplitting blast", said Shah Wali, 46, who lives in the village of Goor Gari, 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the border with Nangarhar.
ISIS members killed by 'mother of all bombs' in Afghanistan
Nicknamed the Mother of All Bombs, reports indicate that it killed 36 ISIS fighters and there were no civilian casualties. Achin District Governor Esmail Shinwari said: "The explosion was the biggest I have ever seen".
"The explosion was the biggest I have ever seen".
As a candidate he was also highly skeptical of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, but side-by-side with the alliance's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week, he took the opposite tack.
"Daesh (IS) fighters are active in this area and have overrun our houses", said Achin resident Khair Mohammad. The whole house was shaking.
"They killed our women, youths and elders sitting them on mines".
"This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and risky Weapons".
According to one USA official speaking to CNN, there are between 600 and 800 fighters aligned to the offshoot of ISIS in Afghanistan - which some suspect may no longer be loyal to the wider ISIS movement.
Thursday's strike came as US President Donald Trump dispatches his first high-level delegation to Kabul, amid uncertainty about his plans for the almost 9,000 American troops stationed in Afghanistan.
"I talked to my family members over the phone last night and they said there had been shelling", said labourer Safdar Shinwari. "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", Trump said.
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