In a series of three tweets, Karzai said, I vehemently and in strongest words condemn the dropping of the latest weapon, the largest non-nuclear #bomb, on Afghanistan by us military.
Ataullah Khogyani, spokesman for the provincial governor in Nangarhar, said the number of Islamic State group dead was up from the 36 reported a day earlier. A statement released Friday through ISIS' media wing, Amaq News Agency, said none of the terror group's fighters were killed or injured.
The bomb's use has attracted enormous attention, but its aim in Thursday's attack was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel and cave complex used by Islamic State fighters in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan. According to Los Angeles Times, U.S. Army General John W. Nicholson, who commands U.S. Afghan forces, said in a statement that "the strike was created to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction" to the ISIS-affiliated fighters stationed there.
Some local elders said most of the civilians in that area had already fled due to the presence of IS as well as extended fighting between IS and government forces.
Current President Ashraf Ghani's office said on Friday that there was "close co-ordination" between the USA military and the Afghan government on the operation, and they were careful to prevent any civilian casualties.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai tweeted: "This is not the war on terror, but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and unsafe weapons".
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The Islamic State (ISIS) was expected to deny any significant loss from the U.S. bombing on its base in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province on Thursday.
USA and Afghan troops went on the offensive against the local Islamic State branch in March, even as they continue to battle a Taliban insurgency in the rest of the country. Addressing a gathering in the capital, Kabul, Mr Karzai said that allowing the USto carry out the bombing was "a national treason" and an insult to Afghanistan.
"All victims of the attack were innocent civilians including women and children", he said.
The aerial images show the moment when the so-called "mother of all bombs", which had never been used until this Thursday, hit the side of a mountain in the Achin district of Nangarhar province with a explosive power equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, Efe news reported.
Another person was wounded when a second bomb exploded in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, he said.
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