"All the Arab tribes will take revenge, and the Americans did not account for this," added a retired teacher, Mohammed Abbas.

Within hours of the verdict, unknown assailants attacked an Iraqi military convoy in downtown Tikrit and a gunfight erupted. Huddled in her home nearby, Amira Khalid, 60, pondered life without her former leader.

"We used to have special treatment under Saddam's regime. Where is the security now? Can any woman walk in the street at night? Of course not," she cried. "I ask the government, can you restore the security of Saddam?"

Iraqi police charged with enforcing a curfew didn't even bother to try to stop protesters in the Baghdad's central Shi'ite neighborhood of Karadah. They waved on protesters who hooted and chanted slogans condemning Saddam.

Some shops even began to open as residents started moving through the district despite the ban on pedestrians and vehicles throughout the capital.

In the northern town of Kirkuk, Kurdish taxi driver Khatab Ahmed kept his children home from school and the family gathered around the television watch the sentencing.

"This is the fate of Saddam, who killed your uncle," Ahmed, 40, told his six children as celebratory gunfire rang out in the street. Ahmed's brother and uncle disappeared after their arrests by Saddam's security forces in the 1980s.

"I want them to see with their own eyes what happens to a ruler who oppresses his people. I think this is the best lesson to my children about respecting other human beings," Ahmed said.

In the farming town of Dujail, home to the 148 victims and many more survivors of Saddam's 1982 crackdown, clan chiefs went door-to-door congratulating one another. The sound of women's ululating cries rang out through a light rain.

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