WASHINGTON—The U.S. commander in Afghanistan who ordered use of the “mother of all bombs” to attack a Daesh stronghold near the Pakistani border didn’t need and didn’t request President Donald Trump’s approval, Pentagon officials said Friday.

The officials said that even before Trump took office in January, Gen. John Nicholson had standing authority to use the bomb, which is officially called the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, the largest non-nuclear bomb ever dropped in combat. The bomb, dropped by a special operations MC-130 aircraft, had been in Afghanistan since January.

The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter and requested anonymity.

The bomb’s use has attracted enormous attention, but its aim in Thursday’s attack was relatively mundane by military standards: destroy a tunnel and cave complex used by Daesh fighters in a remote mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan.

Nicholson had a secondary goal in mind, however, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. The official said Nicholson wanted to demonstrate to leaders of the Daesh affiliate in Afghanistan the seriousness of his determination to eliminate the group as a military threat.

The official said use of the weapon had nothing to do with sending a message to any other country, including North Korea.

“This was the right weapon against the right target,” Nicholson, the commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, told reporters Friday. “We have U.S. forces at the site and we see no evidence of civilian casualties nor have there been reports.”

Nicholson added that the strike “demonstrates the commitment of Afghan forces, Afghan government and U.S. partners to defeat” Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The Air Force estimates each MOAB costs about $170,000 (U.S.) to build. It hasn’t said how much it cost to develop the bomb or how many exist. An Air Force spokeswoman, Erika A. Yepsen, said the bomb was made “in-house,” with some parts manufactured by the Air Force itself, so the overall cost is only an estimate. Most weapons are made by defence companies under written government contracts.

Nine years ago the Air Force published an account of how it came to manufacture the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, known technically as the GBU-43B, a designation that reflects the fact that it is precision-guided. The weapon from which it evolved, the BLU-82 (Bomb Live Unit-82), was about half MOAB’s size and was an unguided, or dumb, bomb.

The U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan on Friday defended the use of the MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) bomb against a Daesh cave and tunnel system.

The MOAB was developed and built at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida by the Air Force Research Laboratory Munitions Directorate.

The Air Force account, written in March 2008, said MOAB “started out simply as an idea” that became a request in late November 2002 as the administration of George W. Bush was contemplating invading Iraq to topple President Saddam Hussein.

Afghan officials said on Friday that the U.S. airstrike killed at least 36 militants. It also triggered a rift among some of the country’s current and former officials.

The death toll was given Friday by Dawlat Waziri, an Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman, after the raid the previous night.

In posts on Twitter, the office of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani reiterated comments by U.S. officials, saying the raid was to support Afghan and U.S. forces against Daesh in the Achin district of eastern Nangarhar province and efforts were made to minimize civilian deaths.

But his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, strongly condemned the bombing.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“This is not the war on terror but the inhuman and most brutal misuse of our country as testing ground for new and dangerous weapons,” Karzai, the leader of Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014, wrote on Twitter. “It is upon us, Afghans, to stop the #USA.”

Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan, Omar Zakhilwal, also protested the U.S. attack, breaking ranks with Ghani.

“I find the use of the largest non-nuclear bomb, the so called ‘mother of all bombs,’ on our soil reprehensible and counterproductive,” Zakhilwal said Friday on Twitter. “If big bombs were the solution we would be the most secure place on earth today.”

Asked Thursday in Washington whether he authorized the strike, Trump told reporters at the White House, “We have the greatest military in the world and they’ve done a job, as usual. We have given them total authorization and that’s what they’re doing.”

The Department of Defense released video showing the moment the "mother of all bombs" struck Afghanistan, where U.S. officials said a network of tunnels and caves was being used by militants linked to Daesh.

The action came a week after Trump authorized missile strikes against Syria for a chemical weapons attack on civilians. It also coincides with rising concern that North Korea may conduct another nuclear test or missile launch. Trump has vowed that the U.S. will act to stop North Korea’s nuclear program unless China manages to constrain its neighbour.

“I don’t know if this sends a message,” Trump said when asked if the bomb serves as a warning to North Korea. “It doesn’t make any difference if it does or not. North Korea is a problem. The problem will be taken care of.”

The bomb dropped in Afghanistan, designated a GBU-43, weighs 21,600 pounds. It’s released from an MC-130 transport plane by parachute and utilizes global positioning system navigation to manoeuvre to the intended target, according to an Air Force statement.

The move comes while the Trump administration is reviewing strategy in Afghanistan as Taliban forces continue to gain ground and Daesh is establishing its own strongholds.

The Taliban control or contest more than half of Afghanistan’s populated areas, according to U.S. estimates, making it harder for the U.S. to extract itself from its longest-ever war.

The Taliban sees Daesh as a potential foe and has told its followers to leave Afghanistan, but the group still condemned the U.S. strike. Zabihullah Mujahed, a spokesman for the Taliban, said in an emailed statement that it was “an act of terrorism and brutality.”

The Taliban view Daesh as foreign militants trying to gain influence across Central Asia. For its part, the Taliban has been trying to overthrow Ghani’s democratically elected government, and reimpose its own harsh interpretation of Islamic rule.

Former president Barack Obama had planned to remove most U.S. troops from Afghanistan before leaving office, but pulled back from that plan because of Taliban gains and the inability of Afghan forces to fight on their own.

About 13,000 U.S. and NATO troops remain in Afghanistan, and the top U.S. commander is pushing for several thousand more.

With files from Bloomberg

Read more about: