Government and human rights teams are in western Afghanistan to investigate charges that 76 civilians were killed in US-led coalition strikes on rebels.
The strikes early Friday were in Shindand district, about 120 kilometres south of the city of Herat and near an airstrip used by international troops.
Most of the roughly 15 houses destroyed in the strikes belonged to men who worked at the airstrip as security guards, locals said.
The area is calm, the defence ministry said, after angry demonstrations on Saturday (local time) in which chanting villagers torched a police van, overturned a delivery truck and carried banners that read "Death to America."
"It's calm now. We're investigating the incident," ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi said.
"Our initial investigation shows that scores of civilians have been killed. The tragedy is much more serious than we had initially thought," he said.
Mr Azimi had said Friday five civilians and 25 militants were killed in the action; the interior ministry said 76 had died, including 50 children, while the US-led coalition said only 30 militants were killed.
A delegation appointed by President Hamid Karzai and headed by the religious affairs minister had flown into the Shindand airstrip and then driven to Azizabad village, district chief La'l Mohammad Omarzai said.
Most of the houses destroyed in the bombing were those of the security guards at the Shindand airstrip, Mr Omarzai said.
The leading Afghan rights body also had a team in Shindand, chief executive director Hossain Ali Ramoz said.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission's information was that 78 people had been killed, he said.
The commission said in a statement Sunday that more than 900 civilians had been killed in insurgent attacks and military operations against rebels in Afghanistan this year.
