President Hamid Karzai was warned of a weekend assassination plot against him, Afghanistan's intelligence chief said yesterday, while admitting failings by security services that allowed militants to launch the attack.

Meanwhile, a suicide assault killed 16 people, including 12 police, in an eastern province, officials said. Forty-one people were wounded.

Afghanistan's three top security officials lost no-confident votes but still retained their jobs after Amrullah Saleh told Parliament the plot to kill Karzai was hatched last month. The gunmen had rented the hotel room they opened fire from 45 days before the attack, he said.

Karzai and other dignitaries escaped unharmed from Sunday's assault during a ceremony in Kabul marking Afghanistan's victory over the Soviet occupation of the country in the 1980s. Three other people, including a lawmaker, died.

Three of the attackers were also killed in a gunbattle with security forces after the assault, Karzai's government said, but the Taliban said three other insurgents got away.

"We had technical information ... that this work would happen," Saleh told a National Assembly session broadcast live on national television. "We passed this information to the national security (adviser) and to the president of Afghanistan."

Despite stringent measures by security services to protect the event, "the result is that we failed," Saleh said.

An Afghan intelligence official has said about 100 people were rounded up for questioning after the attack but it is unclear how many are still being held.

Saleh, Defense Minister Abdur Rahim Wardak and Interior Minister Zarar Ahmad Moqbel were summoned to explain to lawmakers what happened Sunday.

All three lost no-confidence votes against them by lawmakers yesterday, but the numbers were not high enough to press for their ouster.

Before the vote, Saleh said the three attackers had been locked inside a three-story guest house for 36 hours before they tried to kill Karzai.