What the 'Mother of All Bombs' Accomplished

The "mother of all bombs" dropped on the Islamic State in Afghanistan Thursday not only killed 36 militants but also destroyed their base within a 1,000-foot-long network of tunnels and a stockpile of weapons, says the Afghan defense ministry. A presidential spokesman tells the BBC that ISIS commander Siddiq Yar was among those killed as the GBU-43/B Massive Ordinance Air Blast bomb detonated in the Momand valley of Achin in Nangarhar province.

Officials say civilians had previously left the area and weren't affected by the blast, which the district governor described as "the biggest I have ever seen." President Trump says the strike was "another successful job," per CNN, which notes the US military had pegged the number of active ISIS militants in the area at up to 800. They had been launching attacks on Afghan troops from the tunnels. One person who was displeased by the move: former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who called it "an inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country." Read more about the specifics of the bomb here. (More Afghanistan stories.)