Iraqis gather after burial

2006-12-31 10:26

Baghdad - Thousands of Iraqis flocked to Saddam Hussein's hometown Sunday, where the deposed leader was buried in a religious compound 24 hours after his hanging.

Saddam was buried shortly before dawn at the centre of Ouja, the town of his birth. Few were present for the internment near Tikrit, 130km north of Baghdad, according the Salahuddin Province governor.

Saddam was captured in an underground hide-out near Ouja on December 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops.

The former Iraqi leader's burial place is about 3km from the graves of his sons Odai and Qusai in the main town cemetery. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003.

A day earlier, Iraqis awoke to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam neck and his white-shrouded body, the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen.

Celebratory gunfire

They went to bed as new video emerged showing Saddam exchanging taunts with onlookers before the gallows floor dropped away and the former dictator swung from the rope.

In Baghdad's Shiite neighbourhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets on Saturday to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy. Celebratory gunfire erupted across other Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution, and the bloodshed from civil warfare was not far off the daily average - 92 from bombings and death squads.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.

Still, authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death November 5.

By several accounts, Saddam was calm but scornful of his captors, engaging in a give-and-take with the crowd gathered to watch him die and insisting he was Iraq's savior, not its tyrant and scourge.

- AP