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Baghdad (eCanadaNow) - Feared extremist Shiite cleric and militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr denounced Wednesday's attacks on the minarets of a sacred Shiite shrine, blaming the Iraqi government and "foreign occupation" for the damage.

Extremists Wednesday blew up the minarets of one of the holiest religious sites for Shiite Muslims in the northern Iraqi town of Samarra, the second attack on the site.

Police reported that the two thin towers of the Mosque of Imams Hassan al-Askari and Ali al-Hadi had been completely destroyed.

"A Muslim would never dare to do such a thing," a furious al-Sadr said in a statement to reporters in the revered Shiite city of Najaf, 180 kilometres south of Baghdad.

"(The perpetrators) are the sly hands of (foreign) occupation that want to do us harm," the statement signed by al-Sadr added, referring to US-led multinational forces stationed in Iraq - a favourite target for Jaish al-Mahdi militias loyal to al-Sadr.

Police reported that before the bombs were detonated, several mortar shells had struck the site which was being guarded by army and Interior Ministry units.

A joint statement by US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker and General David Petraeus, commander of the multinational forces, stationed in Iraq condemned the "vicious" attack on the minarets and blamed it on the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

"It is an act of desperation by an increasingly beleaguered enemy seeking to obstruct the peaceful political and economic development of a democratic Iraq," the statement read.

"We share the outrage of the Iraqi people against the crime," it added.

The Iraqi government imposed a blanket curfew Wednesday in Baghdad following the attack. The curfew will continue until further notice.

An attack on the mosque in February 2006 brought the imposing golden dome - for which the site is also often referred to as the Golden Mosque - crashing to the ground, killing one person and injuring two others.

The 68-metre-tall golden dome was completed in 1905 at the site of the mosque dating back to the 10th Century.

That attack triggered a wave of sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq which since then has claimed an estimated 15,000 lives and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of others from their homes.

Shiite clerics had accused the government after the first attack of taking too long to repair the golden dome on top of the mosque, an accusation repeated by al-Sadr in his Wednesday statement.

Al-Sadr said that the government was also to blame because it did not either protect or restructure the two shrines.

Top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned the attack and urged people not to follow the path of sectarianism, his office said.

The Chairman of the religions foundation of Sunnis in Samarra Sheik Ahmed-al-Samarai condemned the attack and urged Iraqis not to get drawn into conflicts between religious groups.

The Golden Mosque contains relics of the imams Hassan al-Askari and of Ali al-Hadi who lived in the 9th century and who are regarded by Shiites as the 10th and 11th imams after the Prophet Mohamed.

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