Speaking to a group of students visiting the Vatican on Saturday, Francis told them how ashamed he is of the bomb's name.

Mothers give life, not death, and suggesting a bomb could also be a mother is wrong, he said to the students.

Francis was referring to the US Air Force GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb the US dropped on Islamic State fighters in Afghanistan last month.

The Air Force call this bomb "the mother of all bombs", or MOAB for short.

It is the biggest non-nuclear device to be used in warfare.

It weighs about 10,000 kilogrammes, is around nine metres long, carries 11 tonnes of explosives and has a bomb radius which is about 1.5 kilometres wide.

The Air Force says that dropped from a Hercules 130 cargo plane, the bomb can create a blast crater more than 300 meters wide.

The Afghani Ministry of Defence said the bomb killed 36 militants.

The American president, Donald Trump, said the bombing raid was "successful".

Bombing Islamic State fighters was one of Trump's election pledges.

• BBC
• The Telegraph
• The Daily Mail
• The Daily Mail
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