Blast in southern Afghanistan kills 17

Violence is at its worst in Afghanistan since 2001, with record casualties on all sides of the conflict and the insurgency spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east into once-peaceful areas in the north and south.

Zalmai Ayoubi, spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, said the target of the raid, which took place in the town of Spin Boldak on the Pakistani border, was the police commander who was bathing at the time of the attack.

"This brutal and inhumane act was the work of the enemies of Islam and humanity," he said.

The other casualties were all civilians, Ayoubi said.

Abdur Rahman, a police official in Spin Boldak, confirmed the attack had been carried out by a suicide bomber, but gave a lower death toll of 13. Numbers of the dead and wounded in such incidents normally rise in the hours after the attack.

Friday's suicide raid was the deadliest attack so far in 2011 and comes after the end of the bloodiest year of a war that has now dragged on for more than nine years.

Last year, a record 711 foreign troops were killed, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.com, compared to 521 for 2009.

Afghan security forces have been hit even harder than foreign troops. A total of 1,292 Afghan police and 821 Afghan soldiers were killed in 2010, according to the Afghan government.

Afghan civilians have borne the brunt of the fighting as they become caught up in the crossfire. The United Nations has said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 wounded between January and October last year, a 20 percent increase on 2009.

(Reporting by Ismail Sameem; Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)