New footage has revealed the aftermath of the US Army's 21,600lb 'MOAB' that was dropped in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan killing 94 ISIS militants according to the Afghan army. YouTube / AiirSource Military
The incredible destruction wrought by the US Army's MOAB, better known as the "Mother of All Bombs", has been revealed in new footage.
Dropped in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, on a mountain riddled with tunnels, the 21,600lb (9700kg) bomb successfully killed 94 ISIS militants, including four commanders, according to the Afghan army.
In its wake, the device - the most powerful conventional weapon ever used in war - has left a scar on the scenic Afghan grasslands that is terrible to behold, Fox News reported.
Even at the edge of the half-mile blast radius, buildings were battered and left falling apart. Photo / Fox News
The scenery around the bomb site is beautiful: Rolling, grassy hills folding and buckling up into towering, rocky mountains.
But where the MOAB or, to give it its official title, the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast, landed on April 13 is a different matter.
Designed to detonate two metres above the ground, and with an explosive yield equivalent to 11 tonnes of TNT, the bomb ravaged the area within a half-mile of its detonation point.
Trees have been left as little more than splintered stumps poking from rubble-strewn soil.
The body parts of militants lie torn, scattered and forgotten across the fields once controlled by the Islamic State Khurasan, or ISIS-K, group.
Vehicles within the blast region are hollowed-out, burned up shells fit for nothing more than scrap.
Buildings have been punched through like paper, bricks and chunks of concrete heaped in useless piles.
"There were tunnels that were entirely destroyed, decimated guns of ISIS, about 20 dead bodies and trees ripped from the earth," Karim Amini, a local TOLO News journalist who toured the site, told Fox News.
The explosion twisted this pylon, causing it to crash to the ground. The actual area away from the blast is idyllic - a stark contrast with the devastation. Photo / Fox News
"Scores of houses were also destroyed, and even parts of the mountain were, too."
In some of those houses that still stand, on the very edge of the blast zone, ISIS graffiti can still be seen on the walls.
"Surrender to us," says one. "Long live Islamic State," says another.
No one lives there now.
In another house on the edge of the blast, a bed and prayer mat lie in the same room as a cage; believed to have once contained prisoners of the psychopathic "Islamic State".
The bomb was designed to pulverise everything beneath its detonation point and suck air out of any tunnel systems that withstood the blast
Amini said of the blast zone itself: "[The destruction] was wide, but how deep the MOAB went was not clear as it dived into the earth and blew out the tunnels, which you can't see."
Cars in the blast zone were left crumpled, gutted wrecks. The bomb pushed ISIS out of the area, to the relief of locals, although ground zero still has conflict. Photo / Fox News
The bomb was first produced in 2003, but has not been deployed until now because the US Army has been fearful of collateral damage from its massive blast.
But ISIS-K's isolated mountain fortress provided few such concerns.
The Afghan government said no civilians were hurt in the blast; but a parliamentarian from Nangarhar, Esmatullah Shinwari, said a teacher and his son were killed in the explosion.
Mohamad Omer Safi, former provincial governor of Kunduz and head of the UN Security Office-Afghanistan complained that the attack was "inappropriate".
The bomb was designed to pulverize ISIS tunnels (pictured) under the mountains, and suck air out of any that survived. The damage is so fierce it's hard to see how much is left. Photo / Fox News
"The US was just using Afghanistan as grounds to send a message to North Korea, Russia, trying to threaten them," he added.
He questioned why the bomb wasn't dropped two-and-a-half miles away
