The Pentagon says U.S. forces in Afghanistan dropped the military’s largest non-nuclear bomb on an Islamic State target in Afghanistan, the Associated Press reports.
A GBU-43/B was dropped at 7 p.m. local time Thursday, CNN reported.
Adam Stump, a Pentagon spokesman, said the bomb was used for the first time in combat. He has also said it contains 11 tons of explosives. The Air Force calls it the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb. The MOAB is a 21,600-pound, GPS-guided munition that is America’s most powerful non-nuclear bomb. It has been nicknamed the “Mother Of All Bombs.”
Mr. Stump says the bomb was dropped on a cave complex believed to be used by Islamic State fighters in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, very close to the border with Pakistan. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said that ISIS fighters use the caves to “move around freely.”
Spicer also said that the military did what it could to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage.
It was dropped by an MC-130 aircraft, operated by Air Force Special Operations Command, according to the military sources. The Pentagon said the strike was “designed to minimize the risk to Afghan and U.S. Forces conducting clearing operations in the area while maximizing the destruction of ISIS-K fighters and facilities.”
Gen. John Nicholson, the U.S. forces commander in Afghanistan, signed off on the use of the bomb.
“The last visit by a sitting national security adviser to the country was in 2009. Then-President Barack Obama sent then National Security Adviser Jim Jones to Afghanistan, shortly before announcing his surge strategy for the country. Washington officially ended combat operations there in 2014, taking on a train-and-advise mission shortly thereafter,” the Washington Times reported.
The attack comes as President Trump announced Wednesday that National Security Adviser H.M. McMaster would be heading to Afghanistan, to assess the current state of U.S. operations in the country.
