JALALABAD - Afghan authorities Saturday reported a jump in fatalities from the American military's largest non-nuclear bomb, declaring some 90 Islamic State fighters dead, as US-led ground forces sought to advance on their mountain hideouts.
Dubbed the "Mother Of All Bombs", the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast was unleashed in combat for the first time Thursday, hitting IS positions in a remote area of eastern Nangarhar province.
The unprecedented attack triggered global shock waves, with some condemning the use of Afghanistan as what they called a testing ground for the weapon, and against a militant group that is not considered a threat as big as the resurgent Taliban.
The bomb smashed IS's hideouts, a tunnel-and-cave complex that had been mined against conventional ground attacks, engulfing the remote area in a huge mushroom cloud and towering flames.
"At least 92 Daesh (IS) fighters were killed in the bombing," Achin district governor Esmail Shinwari told AFP on Saturday, adding that three tunnels that sheltered the insurgents had been destroyed.
Shinwari said that American and Afghan ground forces were slowly advancing on the mountainous area, which is blanketed with landmines, to clear the site, but there were still some pockets of resistance from insurgents.
"New fighters have probably come from the other side of the border (Pakistan) to collect the dead bodies," he added.
Nangarhar provincial spokesman Attaullah Khogyani gave a death toll of 90, far higher than the initial toll of 36 IS fighters given by Afghan officials. The dead included the brother of the late IS leader Hafiz Saeed, who was killed in a US air strike last year, officials said.
Shinwari insisted there were "no military and civilian casualties at all".
Security experts say IS had built their redoubts close to civilian homes, but the government said thousands of local families had already fled the area in recent months of fighting.
An elderly man who lives close to the bombing site in Achin's Momand Dara area said the blast was so piercingly loud that his infant granddaughter was experiencing hearing loss. The massive bomb was dropped after fighting intensified over the past week and US-backed ground forces struggled to advance on the area. An American special forces soldier was killed last Saturday in Nangarhar while conducting anti-IS operations.
"The enemy had created bunkers, tunnels and extensive mine fields, and this weapon was used to reduce those obstacles so that we could continue our offensive in Nangarhar," General John Nicholson, the top US commander in Afghanistan, said on Friday.
President Ashraf Ghani threw his support behind the bombardment, saying it was "designed to support the efforts of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and US forces conducting clearance operations in the region".
The bombing came only a week after US President Donald Trump ordered missile strikes against Syria in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack, and as China warned of the potential for conflict amid rising US tensions with North Korea. Trump hailed the mission in Achin as "very, very successful". But some analysts called the action "disproportionate".
"The Trump administration made a lot of noise with this bomb, but the general state of play on the ground remains the same: The Taliban continues to wage a formidable and ferocious insurgency. ISIS, by comparison, is a sideshow," Michael Kugelman of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington told AFP, using an alternative acronym for IS.
"Still, from a strategic standpoint, there is an unsettling takeaway here: The US pulled off a huge shock and awe mission against an enemy that isn't even the top threat to the US in Afghanistan.
The Taliban continues to sit pretty."
The Taliban, a much bigger insurgent group, is expected to soon announce the start of this year's fighting season.
IS, notorious for its reign of terror in Syria and Iraq, has made inroads into Afghanistan in recent years, attracting disaffected members of the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban as well as Uzbek Islamists.
But the group has been steadily losing ground in the face of heavy pressure both from US air strikes and a ground offensive led by Afghan forces.
KARZAI CALLS DECISION TO
DROP US BOMB ‘TREASON’
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai accused his successor on Saturday of committing treason by allowing the US military to drop the largest conventional bomb ever used in combat.
Karzai, who also vowed to "stand against America", retains considerable influence within Afghanistan's majority Pashtun ethnic group, to which President Ashraf Ghani also belongs. His strong words could signal a broader political backlash that may endanger the US military mission in Afghanistan.
"How could you permit Americans to bomb your country with a device equal to an atom bomb?" Karzai said at a public event in Kabul, questioning Ghani's decision. "If the government has permitted them to do this, that was wrong and it has committed a national treason."
Ghani's office said the strike had been closely coordinated between Afghan and US forces and replied to Karzai's charges with a statement saying: "Every Afghan has the right to speak their mind. This is a country of free speech."
During Karzai's tenure as president, his opposition to airstrikes by foreign military forces helped to sour his relationship with the United States and other Western nations.
As the Kabul government, split between Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah under a US-brokered power-sharing deal, remains fragile, Karzai's political interventions draw close attention. Ghani has failed to build the kind of domestic following that Karzai still has despite stepping down in 2014.
Karzai said he planned to "stand against America", a stance he compared to decisions earlier in his life to fight against the Soviets and later the Taliban regime.
"I decided to get America off my soil," he said. "This bomb wasn't only a violation of our sovereignty and a disrespect to our soil and environment, but will have bad effects for years."
While Karzai did not elaborate on how he would oppose the United States, his stance may pose problems for Ghani's administration, which is heavily reliant on the United States and other foreign donors for aid and military support.
Meanwhile, at least 11 civilians were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through their vehicle in the restive southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The blast occurred when the passengers were travelling from remote Nawa district to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah on Friday, government spokesman Omar Zhwak told AFP.
"The blast was powerful and all those on board the van were killed," Zhwak said, adding that officials were trying to determine whether any women or children were among the victims.
AFP/Reuters