* Third "friendly fire" incident in more than a month
* Suicide bomber kills three Afghan police
* More than 10 suspected militants killed in raid
By Michelle Nichols
KABUL, Jan 10 (Reuters) - A foreign force air raid in central Afghanistan may have killed three Afghan police and wounded three, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Monday.
Civilian casualties and the mistaken killing of members of the Afghan security forces have been a frequent source of friction between President Hamid Karzai's government and Western military forces in a war now in its 10th year.
Foreign troops on patrol in Daykundi province on Sunday called in an air strike after seeing nine people setting up what appeared to be an ambush, ISAF said, adding it was later determined the raid may have targeted Afghan police.
"While we take extraordinary precaution while conducting operations to avoid friendly casualties, it appears innocent people may have been mistakenly targeted," senior ISAF spokesman Colonel Rafael Torres in a statement.
The air strike in Daykundi, a remote province west of Kabul, is the third such incident in more than a month. On Dec. 8, the Afghan Defence Ministry condemned a foreign air raid in Logar province it said killed two of its soldiers and wounded five. [ID:nSGE6BF04Y]
Less than a week later, on Dec. 16, the Defence Ministry said a U.S. air strike in southern Helmand province had killed four Afghan soldiers. [ID:nSGE6B707O]
Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since late 2001 when U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban for refusing to hand over al Qaeda militants, including Osama bin Laden, after the Sept. 11 al Qaeda attacks on the United States.
Last year, a record 711 foreign troops were killed, according to monitoring website www.iCasualties.com, up from 521 in 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.
Ordinary Afghans, however, have borne the brunt of the fighting. The United Nations has said 2,412 civilians were killed and 3,803 wounded in the first 10 months of last year, a 20 percent increase over 2009.
The Afghan government has said 5,225 insurgents were killed last year.
SUICIDE BOMBING
In another incident on Monday, a suicide bomber attacked a police vehicle in the town of Spin Boldak in southern Kandahar province killing three policemen, the town's police chief, Abdul Raziq, told Reuters.
Spin Boldak, a major crossing point on the border with Pakistan has seen frequent militant attacks.
On Friday, a suicide bomber killed 17 people, including a police commander, and wounded 21, inside a public bathhouse in Spin Boldak, the worst insurgent attack in more than five months. [ID:nSGE706060]
Separately, foreign and Afghan troops killed more than 10 suspected insurgents during a raid in the northern province of Kunduz on Sunday, ISAF said.
The operation in Kunduz, which has seen a spike in violence over the last two years, was aimed at a district Taliban leader responsible for making bombs and weapons and had close ties with several senior Taliban leaders in Pakistan, ISAF said.
An ISAF spokesman said he did not know if the Taliban leader had been killed or captured during the raid in Archi district. Abdul Rahman Aqtash, a senior police detective in Kunduz, said the operation had killed 17 suspected insurgents.
The Taliban-led insurgency has spread out of its traditional strongholds in the south and east over the past two years into once peaceful areas of the north and west. The north in particular has become a deadly new front in the war. (Additional reporting by Ismail Sameem in Kandahar; Editing by Robert Birsel) (If you have a query or comment about this story, send an e-mail to news.feedback.asia@thomsonreuters.com)
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