From Berlin to London, relief over the demise of the old regime was tinged with concern for loved ones back home and traditional suspicion of the United States.

"Immense joy and great sadness at the same time," one Iraqi said in Berlin, summing up the feelings of many.

The mood was flat at the Iraqi cultural association Al-Rafadein in Berlin's Kreuzberg district.

"At first, I was very happy... now I'm very sad," Adnan Abdulrahman said. "Victory is not in our hands but in those of the Americans."

"I'm very pessimistic," joined in Tareq Issa Taha, spokesman for the group. "The Americans are not our friends."

Germany is home to more than 80,000 Iraqis, as well as some 500,000 Kurds, mainly from Turkey but also from northern Iraq.

Omar, a Kurd, was one of a small group of people who went to the US embassy to thank the United States.

"It was an indescribable feeling, an immense feeling of freedom. I'm going to return there, go home, just to see at first. It's my country and I want to live and work in Iraq," he said.

There was a similar mood in London.

"We watched TV all day long. What a relief! This is the end of a nightmare for the 300,000 people who have been living in exile for 10, 20, sometimes 30 years," said Jabbar Hasan, director of the Iraqi Community Association.

"Everybody agrees on the need to remove Saddam," he added. "But there are different views on the means to achieve it and the US deployment in Iraq."

He said US and British forces should now give Iraq back to the Iraqis.

Shamma, a retired engineer, nodded his accord: "If I invite you to my home as a guest, it doesn't mean that you will come to take my flat and control my family."

But despite the collapse of Saddam's regime, Shamma said he did not want to give his full name in order to protect his family in Iraq.

There was a party mood at the Iraqi Meli-Melo cafe in Sarcelles, a suburb outside Paris.

The owner, Adil, said he was "relieved" even if "it would have been better to topple Saddam without killing civilians."

"That's 35 years now we've been in the mire," said Andre Hanna, who arrived in France from Iraq in 1990. "Since Saddam's statue was brought down, we are finally now getting freedom and democracy."

Adil's wife Nadia Aziz said her children had recorded the televised images of Iraqis in central Baghdad hauling down a huge statue of Saddam with the aid of a few US soldiers.

"They're small, but they understood," she said.

Many of Denmark's estimated 24,000 Iraqis celebrated Saddam's fall into the night, especially Kurds.

They said they were concerned about scenes of looting and hoped they would be able to return soon, maybe in a few months when the situation had calmed.

A few also criticised the US-led military action, saying Saddam would have buckled under diplomatic pressure without the need for war.

In Sweden, which has an Iraqi population of about 70,000, 30 mainly Kurdish Iraqis celebrated outside the Iraqi embassy in Stockholm.

"Now we will be able to return to Iraq with pride, without having to sell ourselves to the regime," Farid Alsaati said as his family in Akalla, a suburb north of Stockholm, looked forward to fulfilling "a dream for 35 years."

Poland's 300-400 strong community of Iraqi exiles urged quick humanitarian aid for the country.

"There will be some people who will want to return to the country. But the decision is not easy," said Souliman Bahjad, an Iraqi of Kurdish origin and a spokesman for the community.

The small Iraqi community in the Czech Republic was happy too.

"We are happy that the regime has fallen and we want the war to end as soon as possible so that innocent people are not killed," Khalid al-Ali, president of the Iraqi Club, told AFP.

"Our suffering will end soon," said Bahaa Aldin, who deserted from Saddam's army a few years ago.

SPACE.WIRE