The USA used the most powerful non -nuclear bomb against the IG in Afghanistan

The US military dropped the most powerful of non -nuclear bombs in the positions of the Islamic State militants in the province of Nangarhar in Afghanistan, CNN reports . The GBU -43B bomb weighing 9.5 tons with satellite guidance (the so -called "mother of all bombs") has a capacity of 11 tons in TNT equivalent, the radius of the defeat is about 140 meters.

As the representative of the White House Sean Spicer said at a briefing, such a powerful bomb was dropped to destroy the system of tunnels and caves used by terrorists. The scale of damage is now estimated by the American command. The United States took all precautions to avoid victims among the civilian population.

The blow was agreed with Kabul, the administration of the President of Afghanistan said . “We knew in advance about the impending operation, it was agreed with us,” a source in the Afghan leadership said. According to him, the forces of IG "suffered heavy losses" as a result of the bombing.

GBU -43B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAV) - Hanggated air bomb. Its length is 9.17 m, diameter 102.9 cm. The weight of an explosive, which is a mixture of hexogen, TNT and aluminum powder - 8.4 tons. The widespread beaconim is Mother of All Bombs (mother of all bombs). Moab is equipped with a KMU-593/B guide system, which includes inertial and satellite navigation systems. It was first tested in 2003, until now in combat conditions was not used.

Now in Afghanistan there are about 8400 US military. They regularly carry out operations against IG in Nangarhara.

In October 2014, the United States and Great Britain transferred their latest bases in Afghanistan Camp Bastion and Camp Lesernek under the control of Afghan security forces. This happened 13 years after the overthrow of the radical regime of the Taliban. The US Army lost 2349 people in Afghanistan.

However, in the same year, a bilateral agreement was signed between Afghanistan and the United States, according to which part of the NATO troops will remain in the country even after the end of the military operation "Invincent Freedom". They had to provide assistance in the fight against anti -government groups.

After the terrorists resumed their activities in early January 2015, having blown up a car in the center of Kabul, NATO, together with the Afghan National Army, began to conduct active measures to neutralize militants within the country.