Kabul: A top Afghan official says one of the militants arrested during the latest attacks on Kabul and three other cities has told authorities the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network was behind the assaults.

Interior Minister Besmillah Mohammadi told reporters on Monday that a total of 36 insurgents were killed during the attacks in Kabul and three other cities in eastern Afghanistan. He says one other insurgent, who was arrested in Nangarhar province, confessed to the police that Haqqani network, based in Pakistan, launched the attacks.

Mohammadi also says that eight members of the Afghan security forces were killed and 40 others were wounded. He says three civilians were killed and 25 others were wounded.

A brazen, 18-hour Taliban attack on the Afghan capital ended early Monday when insurgents who had holed up overnight in two buildings were overcome by heavy gunfire from Afghan-led forces and pre-dawn air assaults from US-led coalition helicopters.

Kabul residents awoke on Monday to a second day of loud explosions and the crackle of gunfire. As darkness turned to dawn, Afghan-led forces fired one rocket-propelled grenade after another into a building in the centre of the city where insurgents began their attack on Sunday.

Fighting there and at the Afghan Parliament building on the southwest side of the city ended just before 8 am.

The US, German and British embassies and some coalition and Afghan government buildings took direct and indirect fire, according to Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, a spokesman for the US-led coalition.

Local residents near the Parliament building said rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire rocked their neighbourhood through the night and into the morning.

Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi said militants took up position in a building under construction near Parliament. Some lawmakers grabbed weapons and started fighting when militants fired on the Parliament building on Sunday.

Reporters for a news agency witnessed the Monday morning assault on another building under construction near the presidential palace, western embassies and Afghan ministries.

Shortly before 3 am, coalition helicopters began flying over the building. At 4:23 am, a religious cleric began calling Muslim worshippers to prayer over a loudspeaker in the area. During the next 15 minutes, troops launched five rocket-propelled grenades into the building. More followed.

The loud booms from the blasts momentarily silenced chirping birds. Red and white flashes could be seen inside the various floors of the multi-storey building. By about 6:30 am, the blasts and shooting had stopped.

The first explosions on Sunday rocked the diplomatic quarter of Kabul. Soon gunshots and rocket-propelled grenade fire were ringing out across the city. Smoke rose over the skyline as sirens wailed. A loudspeaker at the US embassy could be heard barking: "Duck and cover. Move away from the windows."

It was the most widespread attack in the Afghan capital since an assault on the US embassy and NATO headquarters last September blamed on the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based insurgent group allied with the Taliban. Explosions and the crackle of gunfire could be heard throughout the night.