At least 94 Islamic State fighters were killed when the US military dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets in Achin district of Afghanistan's Nangarhar province earlier this week, an Afghan official said Saturday.
In another dramatic show of military force after the bombing of a Syrian airfield with 59 Tomahawk missiles, the U.S. military yesterday dropped a GBU-43/B, colloquially known as the "Mother Of All Bombs" or MOAB, to target tunnels and bunkers built by Islamic State fighter in Nangarhar province.
The bomb, known as the GBU-43/B, is one of the largest airdropped munitions in the U.S. military's inventory and was nearly used during the opening salvos of the Iraq War in 2003.
The GBU-43 (Guided Bomb Unit), one of only 15 ever built, was developed after the U.S. military found itself without the ordnance needed to deal with al-Qaeda tunnel systems in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden in 2001. The munition was developed during the Iraq war and is an air blast-type warhead that explodes before hitting the ground in order to project a massive blast to all sides.
The Daisy Cutter, which was first used to clear landing strips for helicopters in Vietnam, was employed partly for the psychological effect of its massive blast.
By comparison, USA aircraft commonly drop bombs that weigh 100kg to 900kg.
A colossal United States bomb dropped Thursday on ISIS tunnels in eastern Afghanistan killed 36 militants, according to the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
"Everybody knows exactly what happened, what I do is I authorise our military".
US President Donald Trump said Thursday the bombing was "another successful job".
Supreme court hears arguments on jurisdiction, joinder, standing
Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Mo., said its exclusion is discrimination violating its religious freedoms under the U.S. Gorsuch, shown at a Senate confirmation hearing, was an active participant in his first session as a Supreme Court justice.
The airstrike follows last week's surprise missile strike on a Syrian airfield, in the first U.S. military action against the Syrian regime in the six years of conflict there.
"If you look at what's happened over the last eight weeks and you compare that to what's happened over the last eight years, you'll see there's a tremendous difference".
After the recent missile attack by US forces in Syria following an alleged chemical attack by the Bashar al-Assad government against its own people, it is not unlikely that unleashing the earth-shattering bomb in Afghanistan is also meant to be an object lesson for the wider West Asia theatre in a classic case of the conveying of imperialist ambitions under a new US President.
"I don't know if this sends a message".
Yesterday's blast comes a week after Trump ordered a missile strike against a Syrian regime airport and as tensions rise over North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. Its objective was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel complex used by Islamic State fighters in a remote mountainous area of Afghanistan.
"Precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties with this air strike", Ghani said.
"This is the right weapon for the right target", said US General John W. Nicholson, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation commander in Afghanistan.
The ISIS positions hit by the MOAB are in Nangarhar province's Achin district, a sparsely-populated area where 600 to 800 fighters are thought to operate, according to the United States military.
Comments