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The Take

How the Afghan village hit by a 10,000kg bomb is coping now

The Take

Al Jazeera

News, Daily News, Politics, News Commentary

4.7748 Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2017, the US dropped the “mother of all bombs” in a remote village in Afghanistan’s Achin district. Al Jazeera made the journey to see what’s left: homes destroyed, health problems mounting, and no accountability in sight.

In this episode:

Episode credits:

This episode was produced by Sarí el-Khalili, Sonia Bhagat, and Chloe K Li, with Phillip Lanos, Spencer Cline, Mariana Navarrete, Remas Alhawari, Kisaa Zehra, Kingwell Ma, Khaled Soltan, and our guest host, Natasha del Toro. It was edited by Noor Wazwaz. 

Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad Al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is the Take’s executive producer. Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.

Connect with us:

@AJEPodcasts on Instagram, X, FacebookThreads and YouTube

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Al Jazeera Podcasts.

0:07.0

Today, tracing the scars of the mother of all bombs.

0:16.0

You go to these places where wells have dried up,

0:20.0

where ancestral farmlands have been taken away,

0:22.9

where people's homes and their lives and their memories and their children have been destroyed,

0:28.4

and they're still waiting for somebody to be held accountable.

0:33.0

Al Jazeera traveled to the remote Afghan village of Spingar to see what still lingers.

0:41.1

I'm Natasha Deltoro, and this is the take.

0:50.6

My name is Osama Bidjaveh. I'm a correspondent for Al-Zera English. I'm coming to you from

0:56.0

Dauha. As always, happy to have you on the take. You know, really interested in your recent reporting in

1:05.0

Afghanistan, some of the images that you brought back were absolutely stunning. You recently got rare access to Spingar, which is a village in eastern Afghanistan, where the U.S.

1:17.9

dropped the so-called mother of all bombs back in April 2017.

1:24.1

The United States dropped a massive GBU, 43 bomb, also known as the mother of all bombs in eastern Afghanistan.

1:33.3

According to the Pentagon, it was used on a series of caves used by Islamic State.

1:39.3

It's the first time this type of bomb had been used in combat.

1:43.3

Now, I know that this is a very remote village, and I, the first time this type of bomb had been used in combat.

1:47.0

Now, I know that this is a very remote village,

1:51.5

and I actually saw the images of you trying to get there,

1:55.7

and I would love for you to kind of recreate that journey for me.

2:00.8

How did you get there, and what did you see when you arrived?

2:06.1

But since 2017, when the United States dropped the mother of all bombs, a bomb which is 30 feet long, it carries a payload about 10,000 kilograms.

2:12.2

And all we saw was grainy footage of it going down and obliterating something.

...

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