There were no military parades or giant cakes, no golden carriages or schoolchildren dressed in white. Saddam Hussein's 67th birthday passed without a whisper Wednesday in the streets of his hometown of Tikrit, where residents said U.S. soldiers ordered schools and universities closed, and where extravagant celebrations once marked the day.   At that time, about 200 people gathered in Tikrit waving Iraqi flags on his birthday, a celebration that was broken up when U.S. soldiers in Humvees with mounted machine guns arrived and threatened to use force.

Shops in Tikrit, 70 miles north of Baghdad, were open Wednesday and there were people in the streets, residents said.

U.S. forces ordered no special curfews because of the birthday, said Maj. Neal E. O'Brien, a U.S. military spokesman.

But schools and universities were closed at the Americans' request, residents said. O'Brien had no immediate information on such a closure.

Saddam has been in U.S. custody since his capture in December. On Tuesday, he was visited by a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross to see his conditions. Saddam has been held in an undisclosed location undergoing FBI and CIA interrogation.

Tikrit is part of the Sunni triangle, an overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim part of central Iraq that was Saddam's key power base. Fighting in the area has been sharp -- though not of the scale seen at another stronghold of Saddam support, the city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad.

Source: agencies