The “mother of all bombs” unleashed Thursday in Afghanistan by the U.S. left 36 Islamic State terror group fighters dead but killed no civilians, according to government officials in Afghanistan. The U.S. has been concentrated on fighting the estimated 600 to 800 ISIS forces in Afghanistan while also supporting Afghans in their battle against the Taliban. Kabul’s ministry of defense said villagers on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border were terrified by the “earsplitting blast” that took out ISIS caves and ammunitions caches. The bomb, called a GBU-43B, or massive ordinance air blast weapon, is the biggest non-nuclear weapon ever used by the U.S. military in combat. On Thursday, President Trump called the mission “very, very successful.”
Hamid Karzai, the former Afghan president, condemned the use of the weapon on Twitter, writing, “I vehemently and in strongest words condemn the dropping of the latest weapon, the largest non-nuclear bomb, on Afghanistan by U.S. This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons. It is upon us, Afghans, to stop the U.S.” The Pentagon released video of the strike. “This was the right weapon against the right target,” Gen. John Nicholson said Friday in Kabul. “I want to ensure the people of Afghanistan that our forces take every possible precaution to prevent civilian casualties.”
U.S. officials say they have found no evidence of civilian casualties where the bomb hit.