Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has said intelligence failure on the part of NATO forces, allowed the Taliban to carry out the latest attacks in Kabul and elsewhere in the country.

"The terrorists' infiltration in Kabul and other provinces is an intelligence failure for us and especially for NATO and should be seriously investigated," Karzai said in a statement on Monday.The president however, praised the "bravery and sacrifice of the security forces who quickly and timely reacted to contain the terrorists".

In his first reaction after the series of attacks targeting western embassies and NATO bases, which continued till Monday morning, Karzai said that "Afghan security forces proved to the people that they can defend their country successfully". Gun battles between Afghan security forces and Taliban fighters in the capital, Kabul, ended after almost 18 hours of fierce fighting, according to government and police officials.

"The latest information we have about the Afghan parliament area is that the attack is over now and the only insurgent who was resisting has been killed," Hashmatullah Stanikzai, the Kabul police chief's spokesman, said on Monday.Click here to follow our Afghanistan Live BlogThere were conflicting reports regarding the number of casualties in the co-ordinated attacks that targeted mainly western installations in Kabul, which the Taliban described as the launch of a "spring offensive".

Afghanistan's defence ministry said 32 gunmen and three Afghan soldiers were killed in the operation against the multiple assaults, Reuters news agency reported.But Bismillah Mohammadi, the Afghan interior minister, said 36 fighters, eight members of security forces and three civilians were killed and 44 others wounded in the gun battle, the AFP news agency reported.

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Kabul, said: "They [Taliban] have been able to strike right in the heart of the city, supposedly the most well protected part of Afghanistan.""There are now of course, serious questions about intelligence failings that allowed the Taliban to effectively lay siege of the city for almost 18 hours," he said.'Peace efforts'

The Afghan capital awoke on Monday to a second day of explosions and heavy gunfire as a joint operation by Afghan and international forces worked to defeat the fighters holed up in one building in the heart of the city and another near the Afghan parliament.