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More than 180 people were killed and hundreds wounded in simultaneous bomb attacks in two Iraqi cities on the holiest day of the Shiite Muslim calender, with some blaming US forces for lax security.

Messages poured in from around the world condemming the Tuesday attacks, the worst carnage since the fall of former dicator Saddam Hussein.

A day meant to be a public Shiite religious event for the first time after decades of repression turned into one of slaughter in the holy city of Karbala and in Baghdad.

Iraq's leaders declared three days of mourning and postponed the signing of a temporary constitution, scheduled for Wednesday, possibly to Friday.

Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish members of Iraq's Governing Council pointed the finger at Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, a wanted Jordanian suspected of ties to the Al-Qaeda terror group.

"These sick people with guns are seeking to start sectarian strife so they can consolidate their positions," said Adel Abdel Mehdi of the main Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

"Their aim is to stop Iraqis from winning their sovereignty." US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, who described the attacks as "very sophisticated," said they were closely coordinated by a "transnational organisation" and also named Zarqawi as a prime suspect.

The attacks were blamed variously on suicide bombers, rockets or mortars, or, in Karbala, concealed bombs.

In Karbala, where hundreds of thousands of Shiites, including Iranians, were taking part in the Ashura mourning ritual, at least 112 people were killed and 235 wounded in several coordinated blasts.

and outside while ambulances and private vehicles streamed in with casualties covered in blood-stained blankets.

"I saw a man running into a group of Iranian pilgrims and exploding himself," Karbala police Captain Mahdi Ghanami told AFP.

"The bomb claimed 25 victims." A spokesman for Polish coalition forces, meanwhile, said two suspects were caught as they prepared to fire mortars on the city.

In Baghdad, at least 70 people were killed and 321 wounded in coordinated suicide attack on the Kazimyah mosque in a Shiite district in the northwest of the capital.

Three suicide bombers detonated explosives and a fourth wearing an explosive vest was apprehended, Kimmitt told reporters. He refused to give the nationality of the suspect.

In February, US officials unveiled a memo -- attributed to Zarqawi --they said proved that Islamic extremists planned to ignite a civil war among Iraq's ethnic and religious communities, notably Shiites and Sunnis.

In the southern holy city of Najaf, one of Iraq's four main Shiite clerics, Bachir Najafi, blamed the attacks on the United States for failing to protect the country's borders from foreign terrorists.

"We put the responsibility of ensuring security in the country and of protecting sacred Shiite sites on the occupational forces because they have left our borders open to infiltrators," the grand ayatollah said in a statement.

"In the meanwhile, these forces have spent their time pillaging the riches of Iraq," he added, warning that "the patience of Iraqis is not without limits." In Washington, US Vice President Dick Cheney said in a rare interview that he believed the attacks were organised by Zarqawi.

The attacks were "desperation moves by al-Qaeda-affiliated groups" that "recognise the threat that a successful transition in Iraq represents," Cheney said.

The vice-president, one of the leading supporters of the invasion of Iraq before last year's war, said Zarqawi had moved from Afghanistan to Iraq just before the war and that US authorities had recently intercepted a Zarqawi letter to al-Qaeda in which he spoke of organising attacks.

Also Tuesday a large explosion hit an oil pipeline near the northern city of Kirkuk causing a huge fire but no casualties. The blast, which hit the main oil line leading to the Baiji refinery 200 kilometres north of Baghad, cause a huge fire.

The oil city of Kirkuk is a hotbed of ethnic tensions among the Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen communities and attacks are regularly launched there on the police, US troops and oil lines.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan condemned the attacks "in the strongest possible terms," calling them the work of terrorists.

Annan was "particularly appalled that these incidents took place in and around Muslim shrines during the holy occasion of Ashura," his spokesman Fred Eckhard said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan condemned "these brutal terrorist attacks in the strongest terms," while British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the perpetrators aimed "to prevent Iraq fulfilling its proper destiny".

European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana also denounced the "heinous" attacks, and French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin expressed his "total horror" at the attacks.

The Arab League in Cairo blasted the "barbarous acts," while Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi condemned the "brutal terrorist attacks" and criticized the US-led occupation forces for failing to "bring security to the Iraqis". Up to 50 Iranian pilgrims were killed in the attacks, Iranian officials said - Sapa-AFP.

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