In a traditional show of celebration, they handed out cakes and sweets to passers-by in the Dolatabad district of southern Tehran. Many of the crowd, among them men, women and children, wept with joy.

"Neither Saddam, nor America, we only want Islam," they chanted, as they danced to Arabic music in the streets of Dolatabad, where most Iraqi refugees living in the Iranian capital are concentrated.

Iran at large is home to more than 200,000 refugees from neighbouring Iran, according to official figures.

"It's the greatest joy I have known in my whole life, and I don't think anything could make me happier," said one of the revellers, 34-year-old Balasem Jamil who fled Iraq 19 years ago.

Yasser Jalali said Saddam should be taken to a public square "so that all Iraqis can torture him in public".

Most of the refugees left Iraq in the early 1980s when Saddam's regime expelled hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of Iranian origin during the eight-year war between Baghdad and Tehran.

Others followed in 1991 after a failed Shiite Muslim revolt in the aftermath of the Gulf War over Kuwait.

SPACE.WIRE