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| Heavy machine guns and grenades have been used by both sides |
The Taliban says it is behind the triple assault on the provincial governor's office, the Afghan spy agency and a police station.
About 23 people including three police have been injured in the fighting, which spread panic on the streets.
US helicopter gunships are reported to have been involved.
Gunmen in a four-storey shopping centre exchanged fire with security forces in Governor Tooryalai Wesa's compound.
A spokesman for the Afghan spy agency, the National Directorate of Security, told the attack on the governor's compound was now over and two Taliban fighters had died.
He added: "But they are still attacking my office from a nearby Kandahar hotel. Fighting is still intense.
"They are using heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades and AKs [AK-47s].
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A Shopkeeper said "Forget human, even the birds have fled the city”
"Another attack is taking place in Mirwais Neeka area. We have also started searching some areas in the city.
"The Taliban could use the cover of darkness to launch more attacks. Kandahar is on a high state of alert.
"The Taliban planned this well in advance. They wanted to take control of key government offices and take senior Afghan officials hostage.''
There have been at least seven explosions, paralysing the city, says Bilal Sarwary in Kabul.
Two suicide bombers who tried to attack police were shot dead before they could reach their targets.
Witnesses described civilians running through the streets for safety and shopkeepers closing their stores in case of looting.
Military helicopters were hovering above the city.
"Forget human, even the birds have fled the city," a shopkeeper in Kandahar's Chowke Madad district told our correspondent.
Two schools and a municipal traffic office were also reported to have been attacked.
'One by one'
A witness quoted by Reuters news agency said earlier he saw black smoke rising near Mr Wesa's compound.
Kandahar map
Mr Wesa's spokesman, Zalmai Ayoubi, told Reuters from inside the compound that three civilians in the compound had been wounded, but the governor's staff were all fine.
The governor appeared on private Shamshad TV to say: ''I am alive and well, sitting with my friends here in my office.
"No matter how many fighters the Taliban have got in the city, they will be killed one by one.''
Afghan and US forces have launched a counter-operation. "The aim is to clear the shopping centre from Taliban," a local security official told our correspondent.
"We think there are 10 or more Taliban there - some of them suicide bombers. We want to clear the building.''
Nato said it was aware of the attack, and it was helping Afghans provide security, but that it was not aware of its helicopters taking part.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that the militants were trying to hide their defeat, following the killing of Osama Bin Laden, by attacking civilians.
But Taliban spokesman Yusuf Ahmadi said the Kandahar attacks had been planned for some time as part of the insurgents' annual "spring offensive", announced last week, and had nothing to do with Bin Laden's death.
Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a hotbed of the insurgency, has been the focus of military operations by the Western-backed government over the past year.
A senior Kandahar police official blamed the attacks on last month's escape by about 500 prisoners, many of them Taliban, from the main jail in the city.
The official, who did not want to be named, told our correspondent: "If 106 Taliban field commanders - some of them the very backbone of the insurgency - had not escaped from the prison, attacks like this would have not occurred."
Also last month, Kandahar's police chief was killed by an attacker in a police uniform, while in January Mr Wesa's deputy was killed.
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