Suicide bomb kills Afghan official

The suicide bomber chose the one destination where he wouldn’t be patted down, a mosque, the same mosque where the deputy minister of the province worshiped. He and five others were killed. This BBC cameraman arrived at the scene an hour later. He says he found the wall smeared with blood and pieces of the building were found up to 10 kilometers away. It was the first time the Taliban targeted a mosque. The mosque attack happened hours after another suicide bomber hit a car targeting an Afghan army bus killing one civilian and wounding four. The bombs underline the pessimism on three independent reports on the future of Afghanistan, some of which warn the country is on the brink of becoming a failed state, citing rising opium production, an ineffective government, and poverty. The policy advisor of Oxfam, the group responsible for one of the reports, says the average life expectancy is something like 43 or 44 years, one in five children die before they reach five and in rural areas unemployment is over 50% so people are living in extremely difficult situations. Many Afghans say the lack of jobs is the biggest threat to their country’s future.