killing around 40. in the battle two u.s. special operators were wounded, medevacked out alive but later died. a third was grazed by a bullet, staying on the battlefield. all of it happening in the same isis stronghold in eastern afghanistan where the uflt s. dropped a 21,000-pound explosive, the so-called mother of all bombs two weeks ago, collapsing terrorist tunnels and caves. afghan officials say roughly 100 isis combatants were killed by the bomb. defense secretary jim mattis claiming not to care about numbers. frankly, digging into tunnels to count dead bodies is probably not a good use of our troop s time. reporter: more than 100 extremist groups in the region. i don t see how afghanistan doesn t devolve further into endless civil war. that s nbc s hans nichols reporti
seeing with this new commander in chief. i think it is also politically something that the president has seen some favorable responses to some of his early actions in this realm. that may make him more comfortable to take these steps when his military team sees the opportunity that they think is in line with the strategic goals of going after isis in this particular case. not a lot of detail from the president. but an acknowledgment and then an opportunity, again, where we saw him praise the success of this operation. something he likes to do to talk about how successful things are under his watch. in this case, with the military. ali? thanks so much for that. kelly o donnell at mar-a-lago for us. joining me in washington is a former acting assistant secretary for asian and pacific security affairs for the defense department. you covered both these areas we re talking about. let s go back to afghanistan for a second. hold on. let s go to pyongyang and start with that. neither preside
pentagon says 18 anti-assad fighters were mistakenly killed by a u.s. air strike earlier this week. it took place on tuesday. the defense department said our allies in the fight identified the target as an isis fighting position. it turned out to be a fighting position for the syrian democratic forces. joining me now, hagar, who served during the obama administration as a spokesperson to the united mission. and before that, on the national security council. on the left, laura, a co-founder and executive editor of syria deeply, a website covering the six-year-old civil war in syria. and ellen is a professor of public policy and political science at duke university. her latest book, no illusions, focuses on students at russia s
those who have left, those who remain in the country. we saw the mother of all bombs dropped on afghanistan. the early reports are no civilian casualties, which is interesting, given it was the biggest, non-nuclear bomb ever deployed. that part of things gets lost in the discussion between strategy with the united states, iran and russia when it comes to syria. what s your take on it? well, security and civilian life are part of the same story here. isis really emerged as an element of failed syria policy. letting the war drag on. letting people get so desperate made it easier for al qaeda, in the form of al nusra in syria, to gain fighters and isis take over where there was a vacuum. unfortunately, when it comes to incidents like dropping the mother after all bombs on afghanistan or the war on syria, we don t know how many civilian lives have been lost. the u.n. is saying we don t have a cost. we think in syria, north of 400,000 people have died in syria s conflict.
but no one is there to check from the u.n., from these bodies that usually have access to data and to the numbers. we just ran a story on syria deeply about kids in lebanon who don t go to school because they re selling gum on the streets, working in mechanic shops. sometimes they re slipping into prostitution to help the families put food on the table. what security risk is that? we can t worry about isis without thinking about what is happening to actual people in the countries. allellen, let me ask you abo this. the missile strike, in some ways, was meant to be a message to assad. it was meant to be a response to the chemical attack. it was meant to be a signal to russia. the meeting between tillerson and lavrov and then the meeting between tillerson and putin, unclear whether we re better off or worse off. some people say better off as a result of it. do you think putin is having any second thoughts about the depth to with which he and russia support syria? i think russia has h