SHIA militiamen clad in black mounted the rooftops of Dujail, a small farming town, 65 kilometres (40 miles) north of Baghdad. In 1982, in the town’s orange orchards, 148 of its men were killed after a failed assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein. Yesterday they gripped their guns afraid of reprisals from Saddam’s followers.
About 40 people congratulated each other for 15 minutes near the offices of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. But the atmosphere was sombre and no one fired a gun in celebration. Then people closed the shutters on the windows of their homes, and braced themselves for the worst.
A curfew was placed across Baghdad, Dujail’s province of Salahaddin and the neighboring province of Diyala, but it was of little comfort. Residents were