HOLY KERBALA, Iraq: Iraqis were mourning their martyrs on Monday as the death toll from a suicide fuel truck blast in Al-Musayyab near Kerbala reached over 100 with more than 2-dozen other wounded people in serious condition.

Ayatullah As-Sistani, in a meeting with visiting Iraqi Vice-President Adel Abdel-Mahdi, called on Iraqi political and non-governmental groups to prepare themselves for defending innocent people against terrorism and not to let the situation in Iraq deteriorate further.

Iraqi officials Sunday announced the first criminal case against ousted despot Saddam for the 1982 massacre of Mo’mineen villagers in Dujail about 50 miles north of Baghdad. The criminal court has 45 days to set a trial date.

The attack outside a husseiniyah in the highway town of Musayyab on Saturday was the most lethal since the Iraqi government took power in April and the second deadliest single bombing since the war began in 2003.

“After the bomb I went over there and found my son's head. I could not find his body,” said Mohsen Jassim of his son, 18.

“The police banned trucks from entering Musayyab, yet they let in a fuel tanker. This is a crime! The police are all agents (of the terrorists),” shouted one man.

Iraqi leaders hope quick justice for Saddam will help defuse the terrorism.

The Special Tribunal set up to try him said it had charged Saddam and three others with killings in Dujail.

For more than 20 years, Khamisa Youssef of Dujail has dreamed of the day when Saddam would pay for the deaths of her husband Abed Ali Hassan and six sons. Now, she believes that day is coming soon.

Saddam and three others accused in the massacre could receive the death penalty if convicted.

Khamisa, 75, said: “I wish death to Saddam and his aides the way he killed my sons.”

“If I see him now, I will chew him under my teeth and slaughter him with a sharp knife,” Khamisa said. “Even if I do that, I will still be unsatisfied because he killed my husband and sons.”

She spent four years in jail, two in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and the rest in the Nograt Salman prison on the Saudi border.

Abdullah Hikmat, who was only 6 years old at the time of the massacre, said: “I hope that Saddam and his gang will be executed. He took our money and our properties. To me, executing Saddam is better than returning our lost property.”

Ansar Shaheed Al-Mehrab organization in Finland, TNFJ Pakistan headed by Syed Hamid Moosavi, and Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq led by Syed Abdulaziz Al-Hakim have expressed deep condolence to the twelfth imam from the progeny of holy Prophet (p), Al-Imam Al-Mehdi (p), Maraje and bereaved families on the massacre besides condemning the attacks against innocent people.