DONALD Trump has sent a message about his military might through the use of the “mother of all bombs” (MOAB), analysts say.

Part of the US arsenal since 2003 but never used until now, the device is said to have killed 36 Daesh fighters in tunnels and bunkers in Achin district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

The White House has yet to clarify whether or not President Trump gave specific authorisation for the strike, which was signed off by US Central Command’s General Joseph Votel.

But Professor Michael Clarke, of UK-based defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute, said the use of the weapon gives a clear signal about Trump’s priorities and attitude to military action.

Clarke said: “It may not have been initiated by President Trump, but nevertheless he is obviously happy to take credit for it and he is happy that it fits into his broader sense that he wants to be militarily credible.

“It is fairly dramatic. There is a tactical effect on the ground – this is a cave complex the Americans would have known quite a lot about. They knew that if they dropped one of these things it would destroy pretty much everything underground.

“But I think, also, President Trump must have decided, ‘yes, get on and do it, because it is consistent with the message I want to send to the rest of the world’.”

Former US state department spokesman PJ Crowley told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the use of the weapon was an indication of how Trump had given “greater leeway to the military in terms of what it can do” in Afghanistan and Syria.

Crowley, a former US air force colonel, said the bomb was “like creating a minor earthquake in that particular area”, adding: “It is going to have a profound effect not just in the immediate area, but the concussion extends for a considerable distance.

“It is certainly something that will get the attention of military forces in that area.”

US Army General John Nicholson, the commander of American forces in Afghanistan, said the bomb’s use was necessary because the Daesh affiliated fighters of Isis Khorasan were using improvised explosives, bunkers and tunnels to “thicken their defence”.

He said: “This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive.”

Rejecting claims of any wider signal being sent by the bomb’s use, he insisted it was “simply the appropriate tactical moment against the proper target to use this particular munition”, stating: “It is not related to any outside events other than our focus on destroying Daesh in 2017.”

However, Afghans in Scotland echoed the condemnation of Hamid Karzai, the former of president of Afghanistan, who called the move “inhuman” and “brutal”.

The Glasgow-based Afghan Human Rights Foundation speculated that the MOAB had been used to “deter North Korea” after posturing from both Pyongyang and Washington in recent days. In a statement, its head Mohammad Asif said: “America is part of the problem and not the solution in our country and is not sincere about bringing peace.”

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PROFILE: MOTHER OF ALL BOMBS

ON paper its specs are a flurry of letters and numbers, in practice it causes “towering flames” and causes the ground to tremble “like an earthquake”.

The launching of the 9797kg GBU-43 bomb, also known as the MOAB – mother of all bombs, or massive ordnance air blast – is just the latest deployment of munitions by the Trump administration in recent days.

However, its size and power have contributed to provoking furious reaction from Afghanistan, where it fell on Thursday.

WHAT WAS THE IMPACT?

PEOPLE living 1.5 miles from the drop site reported loss of hearing, broken windows and cracks in the walls of their homes yesterday.

MOAB is the largest non-nuclear bomb the US has ever used and the GPS-guided munition carried the equivalent of 11 tonnes of TNT, with a blast radius of 1.6km on each side.

Esmail Shinwari, governor of the Achin district, said the explosion was the largest he had ever seen and “towering flames engulfed the area”.

Meanwhile, the AFP news agency reported that a source from the Afghan armed opposition had spoken of people being knocked unconscious, with the strike making the ground move “like an earthquake”.

WHO WAS THE TARGET?

A BRANCH of Daesh known as Isis Khorasan, which takes its name from an old title for Afghanistan and the region.

According to the US military, there are up to 800 Daesh fighters in Afghanistan, with most in Nangarhar Province.

However, Afghan sources put the number at closer to 1500.

Earlier this month one American Special Forces soldier was killed during a mission against the Khorasan group.

Hamdullah Mohib, Afghanistan’s ambassador to America, told CNN that both governments aim to eliminate Daesh from Afghanistan “this year, hence this intensified operation against all of their bases”. He went on: “We are coordinating quite closely on making sure that we have a winning strategy.”

WHAT HAS TRUMP SAID?

THE White House would not confirm whether Trump had authorised the use of the bomb, but the commander in chief told reporters: “Everybody knows exactly what happened and what I do is I authorise my military.

“We have the greatest military in the world and they’ve done their job as usual. So, we have given them total authorisation.”

On the use of the MOAB, one-time US diplomat Peter Galbraith, a former UN deputy special representative for Afghanistan, said: “A bomb of this magnitude could cause a lot of collateral damage.

“But when you’re using it in a remote, rural part of Nangarhar province in Afghanistan, you presumably can have some confidence that you’ll not have civilian casualties, or at least not many of them.”