A truck carrying the people was on its way from Khair Abad village to Khansheen district centre in Helmand province when it was hit by a home-made device late last night.
Fifteen Afghan civilians died when their vehicle hit a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan and seven road construction company employees were killed in an airstrike in an eastern province, authorities said on Saturday.
The deaths were the latest in an upsurge of violence that has made this year the deadliest for both Afghans and foreign troops since the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban.
There was also a suicide bomb attack on Saturday in northern Kunduz province, one of several areas that were relatively peaceful for many years but where the insurgency is now spreading fast. It is also used as a springboard to launch other attacks.
The attacker was driving a police vehicle and targeted an Afghan National Army convoy, wounding five soldiers and three women who were in the area, said Char Dara District Chief Abdul Wahid Omakheil. Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid said the group carried out the attack.
US president Barack Obama is expected to unveil a review of his Afghanistan war strategy next week, although officials have said they do not expect it to result in major policy shifts.
Obama has pledged to start bringing home US troops - the majority of a 150,000-strong international force - from next year, but not yet decided on the pace of the withdrawal, which many commanders and officials say should happen gradually.
According to UN figures, 1,271 civilians were killed in the first six months of this year, a 21% jump on the same period in 2009. And around 680 troops have died so far in 2010 around a third of the total deaths since the start of the war.
Newly planted mine
The 15 civilians were killed on Friday in the Khan Neshin district of Helmand province, said provincial spokespersonn Dawud Ahmadi. No further details were available.
"It was a newly planted mine," said Ahmadi.
The road construction company employees were killed in eastern Paktia province in an airstrike by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) overnight, said Paktia deputy governor Abdur Rahman Mangal.
He said the employees were in roadside tents near the Paktia provincial capital of Gardez. No further details were available.
"The company had recently begun its operations," Mangal said.
An ISAF spokesperson said they were looking into the incident but declined further comment.
Last month, NATO leaders agreed to hand control of security in Afghanistan to Afghan forces by the end of 2014 and said the NATO-led force could halt combat operations by the same date if security conditions were good enough.
But some US and NATO officials have said the spike in violence and problems in building up a capable Afghan army and police force to take over could make it hard to meet the 2014 target date set by President Hamid Karzai.
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