Bomb attack kills Afghan governor, 15 others

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Temperatures of nearly 40C in Illinois have helped force analysts to discard their upbeat early-season predictions.

KUNDUZ, (Afghanistan), Oct 8 (Reuters): A bomb attack inside a mosque killed the governor of Afghanistan's northern Kunduz province and 15 others as they attended Friday prayers, the local police chief said.
The attack on governor Mohammed Omar happened in neighboring Takhar province, where he had a home. At least 20 people were wounded.
"The situation is chaos, we do not know whether it was a suicide attack or whether the bomb was already planted in the mosque," Shah Jahan Noori, police chief for Takhar province, told Reuters.
It was the most serious attack since parliamentary elections last month, when a wave of assaults killed at least 17 people as the Taliban vowed to disrupt polling.
The war in Afghanistan, now in its tenth year, is at its bloodiest since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban.
The insurgency has spread to northern parts of the country, that until recently were relatively peaceful, from its heartland in the south and east.
Attacks during Friday prayers are relatively rare in Afghanistan. In July, a candidate for parliamentary elections was killed by a bomb planted in a mosque in eastern Khost province.
More than 2,000 foreign troops have been killed since the war began-over half in the last two years-and U.S. President Barack Obama and his NATO allies are under pressure at home over the increasingly unpopular war.
Meanwhile: Heavy US reliance on private security in Afghanistan has helped to line the pockets of the Taliban, a US Senate report says, reports BBC.
The study by the Senate Armed Services Committee says this is because contractors often fail to vet local recruits and end up hiring warlords.
The report demands "immediate and aggressive steps" to improve the vetting and oversight process.
Some 26,000 private security personnel, mostly Afghans, operate in Afghanistan.
Nine out of 10 of them work for the US government.
Private security firms in Afghanistan provide guards for everything from diplomatic missions and aid agencies to supply convoys.
In August, Afghan President Hamid Karzai gave private security companies four months to end operations in Afghanistan.
If your option is either using the local nationals who may be working for a local headman or warlord, or importing somebody from another part of Afghanistan - which automatically makes them a target - you may not have a whole lot of choice"
The report paints a disturbing picture of how some of those hired have little training or experience in firing weapons, while other contractors are warlords with known links to the Taliban, the BBC's Steve Kingstone in Washington says.