At Least 36 ISIS Terrorists Killed After US Bombed Afghanistan

thequint.com ^ | Apr 14 2017

[BenLurkin]

Why are there two explosions?

The first much smaller than the second?

[Vinnie]

That’s a barometric bomb. First blast disperses a flammable substance, gas, aluminum powder. Second blast is ignition of the flammable cloud.
Devastating concussion and sucks all the oxygen out of the air.
WOW

[Yosemitest]

I don;t know and I don't have the time to research it.
I think you're talking about "Bunker Busters" made from Cannon Barrels.

[Deo volente]

The goal was to put the huge tunnel complex out of business. Body count was secondary to filling the tunnels with rubble.

They'll just dig another one someplace else.

Pardon my pessimism about the idea of "destroying" ISIS.

[Yosemitest]

'Mother of all bombs' killed 94 ISIS fighters, Afghan official says

Kabul (CNN)At least 94 Islamic State fighters were killed when the US military dropped America's most powerful non-nuclear bomb on ISIS targets in Afghanistan, an Afghan official said Saturday.

"The number of Daesh fighters killed in the US bomb in Achin district jumped to 94, including four commanders," Nangarhar provincial spokesman Attaullah Khogiani told CNN, using an alternative name for ISIS. Commander: MOAB bomb intended to kill ISIS

Commander: MOAB bomb intended to kill ISIS 02:03 "Our team is in the area and they are doing clearance, so the figure might change as they find more bodies," said Dawlat Waziri, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense.

The initial toll given by Afghan officials for Thursday's strike was 36. A statement released Friday through ISIS' media wing, Amaq News Agency, said none of the terror group's fighters were killed or injured. CNN cannot independently confirm the number of casualties.

The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the "mother of all bombs" for its extraordinary force, was dropped at 7:32 p.m. local time Thursday, according to four US military officials with direct knowledge of the mission.

The strike targeted a network of fortified underground tunnels that ISIS had been using to stage attacks on government forces in Nangarhar province, near the Pakistan border.

The blast destroyed three underground tunnels as well as weapons and ammunition, but no civilians were hurt, Afghan and US officials said.

Also

Afghan officials: Nearly 100 ISIS jihadis, including four commanders, killed in MOAB strike

The estimate yesterday was 36 killed. Today it’s nearly tripled. Why? Probably because Afghan authorities not only have a much larger blast radius than usual to comb for bodies, but because the target was an ISIS tunnel complex. Who knows how many dead jihadis they’re still discovering underground.

As was widely reported Thursday, the MOAB dates to the beginning of the Iraq war but was never used in combat until this week. You can understand why. The bigger the boom, the greater the chance of civilian deaths as collateral damage. Ideally you’d want to use it against a sizable concentration of enemy fighters located far away from population centers, a rare scenario during the war on terror given jihadi guerrilla tactics. But that’s the opportunity that presented itself this week; per CNN, 3,000 Afghan families had fled the area over the past year, leaving ISIS all alone. The fact that tunnels were being targeted made the opportunity more attractive still. The pressure wave created by the MOAB is enormous, capable of penetrating the tunnels and creating cave-ins, and the giant fireball it creates burns up the oxygen, suffocating enemies inside. “It’s a way to get into areas where conventional bombs can’t reach,” said one expert. (For more strongly fortified underground facilities, the U.S. has the MOP.) If not for the MOAB, infantry would have had to fight their way past those tunnels.

And of course, as the Air Force acknowledges, the sheer magnitude of the explosion has “psychological effects.” The commander who ordered it had that in mind, according to a source who spoke to NBC: “[Gen.] Nicholson wanted to demonstrate to leaders of the ISIS affiliate in Afghanistan the seriousness of his determination to eliminate the group as a military threat.” It may end up having “psychological effects” in Syria and North Korea too, although since it wasn’t Trump who ordered the bomb’s use, any deterrent effect on other American enemies in the White House’s crosshairs right now is a happy coincidence. Unfortunately, with a blast this size, there are also “psychological effects” on local Afghans. There were no civilians close enough to be injured by the explosion, but they were plenty close enough to have heard — and felt — it: ...

[DoughtyOne]

Someone else may have done this on this thread, but I wanted to add this just in case.

This MOAB bomb was estimated to carry 21,600 lbs of TNT. LINK

That is 10.53 tons of TNT. (1 ton = 2000 pounds)

Definition of a kiloton: LINK

The Hiroshima bomb was pegged at 15 thousand tons of TNT and the Nagasaki bomb was pegged at 21 thousand tons of TNT. LINK