Thousands flock to Saddam’s grave.

By Steven R Hurst, Baghdad, Iraq
THOUSANDS of Iraqis went to Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Ouja yesterday, where the deposed leader was buried in a religious compound 24 hours after his execution.

Dozens of relatives and other mourners, some of them crying and moaning, attended the interment shortly before dawn near Tikrit, 80 miles north of Baghdad. A few knelt before his flag-draped grave. A large framed photograph of Saddam was propped up on a chair nearby.

“I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime,” said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam’s clansmen who attended the interment.

 

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said: “God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end.”

Gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

His burial place is about two miles 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 American forces in Mosul in July 2003.

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

In Baghdad’s Shi’ite neighbourhood of Sadr City on Saturday, victims of his three decades of autocratic rule took to the streets to celebrate, dancing, beating drums and hanging Saddam in effigy.

There was no sign of a feared Sunni uprising in retaliation for the execution.

The bloodshed from civil warfare on Saturday was not far off the daily average — 92 from bombings and death squads.

Source Link : Irish Examiner.com

Thousands flocking the grave of Saddam Hussein immediately after his burial than the chances are that it will be millions in near future. The Saddam Hussein era of great Arab leader begins where he will live in the minds and hearts of millions of Arabs.