A suicide bomber in Afghanistan has struck a funeral for the victims of an earlier Taliban attack, killing 16 people and wounding 39.

Afghan police searched for a Taliban commander who allegedly forced his 10-year-old sister to wear an explosives-packed vest for an aborted suicide attack in the southern province of Helmand.

A suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a police checkpoint and a bank in southern Afghanistan, one of two attacks in the heartland of the insurgency that killed 18 people over 24 hours.