When an 18-year-old from Pakistan dismounted his bicycle a couple of kilometres (miles) outside the eastern town of Khost last week, his clothes flapped up, revealing a suicide vest to an alert farmer nearby. Police soon surrounded the teenager and ordered him to remove his vest. He refused, grew increasingly agitated and eventually blew himself up, said Yaqoub Khan, police criminal director for Khost province. No one else was hurt.A suicide attacker on Monday waited on a roadside in eastern Paktika province, apparently biding his time for a target to appear. When an Afghan army convoy approached, the bomber blew himself up – several metres (yards) ahead of the vehicles, said Gov Mohammad Akram Akhpelwak. He caused no injuries or damage.
The nature of the two would-be suicide bombers’ deaths is strikingly common in Afghanistan. In sharp contrast to attacks in Iraq, scores of suicide strikes across Afghanistan have killed only the attacker, or a very few victims. NATO said that as of last week, 97 suicide attacks this year have killed just 217 people – a casualty rate four times lower than in Iraq. “These suicide bombers are brainwashed in Pakistan. That’s their only training. They don’t know what they’re doing,” Khan said.