BAGHDAD, Iraq - Ecstasy swept Iraq's Shi'ite and Kurdish regions, but in the Sunni heartland policemen wept in the streets and simple townspeople vowed revenge after Saddam Hussein was sentenced to hang.

Lines of cars hung with plastic flowers snaked through the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, where leaders of the country's long-oppressed Shi'ite majority heralded Saddam's punishment for the 1982 killings of nearly 150 of their co-religionists after an assassination attempt on the former Iraqi leader.

Shi'ites nationwide declared Sunday's verdict sweet revenge for Saddam's 23 years of brutal rule.

"Saddam is paying the price for murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis," said 35-year-old Abu Sinan, as he and his neighbors defied curfew to rally in the streets of Sadr City, Baghdad's impoverished Shi'ite slum. "This is an unprecedented feeling of happiness... Nothing matches it - no festival or marriage or birth."

There had been hope was that Saddam's trial would bring healing to a sundered country, with justice for Shi'ites as one of its chief aims. But Sunday's sentence stirred outrage in Sunni neighborhoods where support for the former regime was strongest.

There were real fears that the country could explode again in sectarian killings and push Iraq toward all-out civil war once the open-ended curfew was lifted.

Gunfire rang out across Iraq on Sunday, both in celebration and in violence.

A police patrol rolled down the main street in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the capital, plastered with posters of the former president. Instead of enforcing a curfew, it led a mob of thousands of demonstrators waving photos of Saddam and shooting AK-47 rifles into the air.

"This is an unfair verdict and if Saddam is executed or not ... he will remain a symbol and no one can delete it - neither the Iraqi government nor the Americans," said Muhssin Ali Mohammed.

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