US warplanes attacked and virtually destroyed the tiny island of Qanus in the Iraqi Salahuddin Province on Tuesday, with officials bragging that they’d dropped nearly 80,000 pounds of explosives on the island.



US officials presented Qanus Island as a hiding place for ISIS forces, and said that the massive attacks would “bring stability to the region” as well as disrupting ISIS’s ability to hide in vegetation by destroying pretty much all of the vegetation.



The Iraqi military participated in the attack as well, parking what officials termed “water boats” around the Tigris River near the island with an eye for shooting anything on the island that was still alive after the US bombings. Locals reported firing continued late into the day.



There simply must have been casualties, though how many seems to be anyone’s guess. Officials aren’t saying, and it seems to depend largely on how many ISIS were managing to hide on a small, largely inconsequential island in the middle of a river.

Author: Jason Ditz Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz