KABUL: Up to 32 civilians including children, 19 security personnel, and dozens of Taliban rebels have been killed in a wave of attacks across war-torn Afghanistan, officials and police said on Saturday.

The attacks hit Friday and Saturday in militant hotspots all over the country and come as Afghanistan faces its worst violence in the eight-year war following the ouster of the hardline Taliban regime in late 2001.

Two suicide attackers on a motorcycle targeted the intelligence service headquarters in southern Kandahar city on Saturday, shooting dead one security guard before both militants blew themselves up, police said.

Faizal Mohammad Shirzad, Kandahar's deputy police chief, said another guard was wounded in the attack, while local hospital official Mohammad Daud Farhad told AFP that a young girl appeared to have died from shock.

In western Farah province, a Taliban mortar attack on a convoy carrying humanitarian food supplies left one driver dead and also killed two women in a nearby house, a local police official said.

The raid sparked retaliation by local and foreign forces, said Afghan National Army spokesman Abdul Bashr Ghori, adding: "In this incident seven ANA soldiers were killed and 12 were wounded."

Ghori also said that two foreign soldiers died in a clash and dozens of Taliban militants were killed in an air strike by foreign forces, but a spokeswomen from the NATO-led coalition was unable to confirm the incident.

Also Saturday, the Taliban attacked a construction site in eastern Kunar province, killing six private security guards.

On Friday in southern Uruzgan province, the interior ministry said a roadside bomb planted by "the enemy of the people of Afghanistan" -- as Taliban insurgents are referred to -- killed 14 civilians in Chora district.

Uruzgan police chief General Juma Gul Hemat told AFP that three children were among the dead.

Also Friday, in Kandahar province, a roadside bomb killed six men and wounded two children, a statement from the provincial government said, while a similar blast in eastern Khost killed two young children.

Northern Afghanistan is also seeing soaring attacks by Islamist extremists, and on Friday seven Afghan policemen including a commander were killed in a Taliban raid in Kunduz province, said district governor Juma Khan Babar.

Also in Kunduz, provincial governor Engineer Mohammad Omar some Chechens were among 13 militants killed in an air strike called by foreign forces.

Four border policemen were also killed in eastern Nangarhar province, a provincial spokesman said.

The Taliban regime was ousted in a US-led invasion in late 2001, but the extremists have regrouped, trying to topple the Western-backed government and take on about 100,000 NATO and US troops in the war-scarred nation.

A London-based think tank said on Friday the Taliban now had a presence in virtually all areas of Afghanistan.

While Kunduz has only in recent months become a Taliban hotspot, southern Kandahar province has long been under the sway of militants who have proved a deadly enemy for US and NATO forces.

Roadside bombs are their weapon of choice, killing foreign and locals soldiers and civilians in increasing numbers.