Sectarian violence that has wracked Iraq racheted up to another bloody level by Saddam's execution

IN Mecca, many Sunni Arab pilgrims voiced outrage. In Gaza, his hanging was compared to the sacrificial slaughter of a sheep on the day of Eid. In Saddam Hussein's own impoverished home village of Awja, they proclaimed him a martyr and promised to avenge him, while in Iraq's Shi'ite and Kurdish communities, they danced in the streets. Whatever the reaction to the hanging of Saddam across the Middle East and wider Islamic world yesterday, the one certainty was that the bombers would strike and the sectarian violence that has wracked the country would be racheted up to another bloody level.

Predictably, within hours of the former dictator dropping from the gallows, 36 people were killed and 58 wounded by a car bomb at a packed marketplace in Kufa near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf. A little later, another three car bombs ripped through the mainly Shi'ite neighbourhood of Hurriya in Baghdad, killing 25 more Iraqis and wounding 65 others. That more such attacks will come is virtually guaranteed.

For most Iraqis, it had always been a matter of when, not if, Saddam would be executed. Capital punishment is nothing new to the Arab and Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, beheading by the sword has been carried out for years, while hanging and death from shooting by firing squad is used in other countries.

For many across the Middle East region and beyond, it was not the method of killing Saddam that provoked their real fury - horrific as it was - but the timing of the execution, coinciding as it did with the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha or festival of sacrifice.

What is more, the Eid also falls during the five-day hajj, when more than two million Muslims from around the world follow ancient rites at the Islamic holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

One of the most important dates in the Islamic calendar, Eid al-Adha marks biblical patriarch Abraham's willingness to kill his son for God. In many Muslim countries, criminals are often pardoned to mark the occasion, and prisoners are rarely executed. Perhaps not surprisingly then that for many Muslims, Saddam's execution on such an auspicious date seemed especially vindictive.

"This is the worst Eid ever witnessed by Muslims. I had goosebumps when I saw the footage," said Jordanian Rana Abdullah, summing up the feelings of many Arabs.

Although some Shi'ites may regard his death as an Eid gift from God, for hardline Sunnis it will confirm their worst views against Shi'ites as heretics in league with Washington.

"What is he Saddam, a sheep? I think the Americans wanted to tell all Arab leaders who are their servants that they are like Saddam, nothing but a sheep slaughtered on the day of Eid," said Abu Mohammad Salama, a Palestinian worshipper in that other troubled part of the Middle East, the Gaza Strip.

News of Saddam's death shocked Palestinians, many of whom had seen him as a steadfast ally ever since he launched his Scud missile attacks on Israel during the 1991 Gulf war which ended Iraq's occupation of Kuwait.

While opinions of Saddam the leader and the man might have varied across the region, this disquiet over the timing of his killing was almost universal.

"I don't have any sorrow or compassion for the man, but the timing is very stupid and Muslims will think this was done to provoke their feelings," said Ehab Abdel-Hamid, a novelist and senior editor at Cairo's independent al-Dostour newspaper.

In Saudi Arabia, the leading Sunni power in the Middle East, there was open criticism of Iraq's Shi'ite leaders for their decision to carry out the hanging during Eid.

"There is a feeling of surprise and disapproval that the verdict has been applied during the holy months and the first days of Eid al-Adha," a presenter on the official al-Ikhbariya TV said.

"Leaders of Islamic countries should show respect for this blessed occasion ... not demean it," said the presenter in a statement which was attributed to official news agency SPA's political analyst.

In London, Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, went a step further in his criticism during an interview with al-Jazeera television.

"Arab public opinion wonders who deserves to be tried and executed: Saddam Hussein, who preserved the unity of Iraq, its Arab and Islamic identity and the coexistence of its different communities such as Shi'ites and Sunnis ... or those who engulfed the country in this bloody civil war?"

In Afghanistan, Mullah Obaidullah, a top commander of the resurgent Taliban, said Saddam's death would galvanise Muslim opposition to the US. "His death will boost the morale of Muslims. The jihad in Iraq will be intensified and attacks on invader forces will increase," he said.

For Arabs and Muslims everywhere, the drama of Saddam's last minutes was brought into living rooms by television pictures of masked hangmen tightening a noose around his neck and later pictures of his body wrapped in a white shroud, his head just visible with a smear of blood on his cheek.

Libya, the only state to show solidarity with Saddam in his death, declared three days of mourning and cancelled public Eid celebrations while flags on government buildings flew at half-mast.

Other Arab governments were more restrained in their reaction, while a senior aide to Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa called the execution "a tragic end to a sad phase in Iraq's history". But in Saddam's home village of Awja, outside Tikrit, surrounded by orchards and palm groves next to the Tigris river, 90 miles north of Baghdad, locals were both philosophical and angry about the village's most famous son's violent end. It was in Awja that Saddam, 69, rose from poverty to rule Iraq by fear for three decades before he was toppled by the US invasion in 2003.

"Saddam is the legal president of Iraq. If they execute him we will rise up. We will all become a bomb," said one young man who still remained sceptical that the former Ba'athist leader had actually been killed.

One of Awja's older villagers, a woman, was more resigned. "It is God's will. There is nothing in our hands we can do," she said, shrugging her shoulders.

In the Shi'ite heartlands of the south and Kurdish north of the country there was, of course, a different take on events, with many people taking to the streets to dance, chant and fire Kalashnikovs into the air in celebration.

"What happened today is unbelievable, it's a great joy that I can't even express," said Mohammad Kadhim, a 30-year-old journalist in Basra.

"I can't believe what I'm seeing on television - Saddam led to the gallows where he hanged tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis by the same method," Kadhim said.

While many of Iraq's Kurdish community felt the era of Saddam was now really over, some were disappointed that the full course of his trail for genocide had not been completed, depriving many of a proper sense of closure.

But with violence killing hundreds of Iraqis every week, even celebrations in Shi'ite cities and the Sadr City slum in Baghdad were brief and fairly restrained. Most Iraqis these days remain more concerned with their own personal survival than with the political wrangling over their former leader's death.

Norzan Yaseen, a 32-year-old teacher in Kirkuk, said Saddam's hanging would make no difference and she urged the government to concentrate on security and basic services.

"The Iraqi government has brought nothing but calamities to the Iraqi people in the past three years," she said.

No doubt conscious of such criticisms from his fellow Iraqis, prime minister Nuri al-Maliki urged Saddam's fellow Sunni Ba'athists yesterday to reconsider their tactics and join the political process.

"Saddam's execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on the return to dictatorship," Maliki said in a statement issued just hours later.

"I urge followers of the ousted regime to reconsider their stance as the door is still open to anyone who has no innocent blood on his hands, to help in rebuilding an Iraq for all Iraqis," he said.

"Your purified land has rid itself forever of the filth of dictatorship and has turned a black page in Iraq's history," Maliki said.

A black page may indeed have been turned, but many more face Iraqis in the months and years ahead. The death toll among the civilian population continues to soar. With death squads operating on both sides of the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide, Saddam's departure from the scene will only stoke such bitterness and bloodletting further.

As for the coalition, Saddam's execution took place during this year's deadliest month so far for US troops in Iraq, with the toll reaching 108.

Across this "purified land" the slide towards all-out civil war has long since been made. Saddam may be dead, but the killing - as any Iraqi will tell you - is shows no sign of ending.