A wave of insurgent attacks in Afghanistan has raised fears that violence will mar presidential and provincial council elections on August 20 and damage the credibility of the polls.

A bomb ripped through a trailer taking villagers to a wedding and towed by a farm tractor -- a common mode of transport in rural Afghanistan -- in the southern province of Helmand on Wednesday, authorities said.

Several officials initially said 21 people were killed, including children and women, and five others wounded.

But by evening provincial police chief Assadullah Shairzad had dropped the death toll to five, saying the first information was incorrect.

"Now we have more accurate and fresh information and that is five civilians were killed and five were wounded," he said of the blast in the southern province's troubled Garmsir district.

Provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi said the dead were two women, two children and one man.

Helmand is one of the most notorious bastions of Taliban violence.

A similar bomb in the same province on Thursday killed five Afghan police and wounded three, the interior ministry said.

One US soldier was killed in a similar bombing on Wednesday and four more on Thursday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.

Both incidents were in the west of the country, it said in separate statements.

They take to 14 the number of Western soldiers to die in Afghanistan this month after July's toll of 76 was the highest for the international forces since they arrived in late 2001 to remove the Taliban government.

The Taliban, masterminding Afghanistan's increasingly deadly insurgency, rely heavily on roadside bomb blasts in their bloody campaign to bring down the Western-backed Afghan government and evict foreign troops.

In another incident on Thursday, militants in eastern Afghanistan ambushed a convoy of tankers transporting fuel to international forces, killing two drivers and wounding a third, the interior ministry said.

Insurgent attacks are at record levels since the 2001 US-led invasion overthrew the extremist Taliban from government.

The militia has ordered a boycott of the poll, only the second time in history that Afghans will vote for a president, and vowed to block all roads to the polling stations.

The rising violence has alarmed a population tired of decades of conflict and the host of international powers on which the fragile nation relies for security and aid.

The new NATO chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, on Thursday continued his maiden visit to Afghanistan, which he has declared a priority since taking office, with a visit to Helmand, Afghan media reported.

He met troops and government officials for talks focused on the international effort to end the violence.

Rasmussen, a former Danish prime minister, vowed after talks with President Hamid Karzai Wednesday to strengthen military efforts to defeat insurgents but conceded peace talks with certain groups many be an option.

The secretary general was due Thursday to also meet some of the 41 candidates registered to compete in the presidential election. Karzai is considered the frontrunner.

Independent election monitor, The Free and Fair Election Foundation of Afghanistan, said meanwhile security trends had worsened over the past three weeks and were "worrisome".

Conditions were "severely challenging" for the opening of polling stations in 14 districts, it said in a report, noting insurgent threats against voting.

"Measuring the success of any election rests on voter turnout, which is directly tied to the security environment surrounding electoral activities," the watchdog said.

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