Agony and ecstasy along sectarian divide

Ecstasy swept Iraq’s Shiite 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 Shiite holy city of Najaf, where leaders of the country’s long-oppressed Shiite 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.