A US military strike with a weapon known as the “mother of all bombs” (MOAB) killed 36 IS militants and destroyed their base, the Afghan defence ministry says.
The most powerful non-nuclear bomb ever used by the US in combat was dropped on IS tunnels in Nangarhar province.
No civilians were affected by the explosion, the ministry said.
Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the attack as “an inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country”.
Chief Executive of Afghanistan Abdullah Abdullah confirmed that the attack had been carried out in co-ordination with the government and that “great care had been taken to avoid civilian harm”.
The Afghan defence ministry said the bomb struck a village area in the Momand valley where IS fighters were using a 300m-long network of caves.
It said the 21,600lb (9,800kg) bomb also destroyed a large stash of weapons.
Presidential spokesman Shah Hussain Murtazawi told the BBC that IS commander Siddiq Yar was among those killed. Mr Murtazawi said the IS fighters in the tunnels had “come from Pakistan and were persecuting people in the local area”.
The GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb was dropped by plane in Achin district on Thursday evening local time, the Pentagon said.
More than 9m (30 ft) in length, it was first tested in 2003 but had not been deployed in combat before.
Achin district governor Ismail Shinwary told the BBC that Afghan special forces, with the help of American air support, had begun anti-IS operations in the area 13 days ago.
He said IS targets had been bombed regularly but “last night’s bombarding was very powerful… the biggest I have ever seen”.
Nangarhar Provincial Governor Gulab Mangal said IS fighters had used the complex to “kill people and hold important meetings”.
A member of an anti-IS group in the area who gave his name only as Mohammad told the BBC he was at a checkpoint 1km from the bomb strike.
He said: “We were eating dinner when we heard a big explosion, [I] came out of my room and saw a mountain of fire… the area was full of light with the fire of the bomb.”
He said all civilians had left the area since the start of the anti-IS operation.
The US has yet to confirm the results of the strike but President Donald Trump called it “another successful job”.
The BBC’s Jill McGivering says it remains unclear what President Trump’s Afghan strategy will be – he has talked in the past about the need for the US to get out of nation-building and may be keen to extricate himself from this long-running and expensive conflict.
But, she says, he has also expressed determination to stop the spread of IS.
Hamid Karzai vehemently condemned the attack, saying on Twitter it was “not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons”.
IS announced the establishment of its Khorasan branch – an old name for Afghanistan and surrounding areas – in January 2015. It was the first time that IS had officially spread outside the Arab world.
Source: BBC
