Saddam buried in home town, tribal leader says

A boy burns a bank note from the time of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. Photo / Reuters

BAGHDAD - Saddam Hussein was buried before dawn local time today in his native village of Awja, near Tikrit in northern Iraq, the head of his tribe said.

Ali al-Nida, head of the Albu Nasir tribe, told journalists the burial in a family plot took place in the early morning, less than 24 hours after the former president was hanged for crimes against humanity.

It is Muslim practice to bury the dead within the day.

Earlier a family statement had said he would be buried in Ramadi, 110 km west of Baghdad, instead of Awja, due to "private family reasons and the prevailing security situation" in Iraq.

Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were buried in the family shrine at Awja after US troops killed them in mid-2003. Saddam himself was captured nearby at the end of that year.

Defence lawyer Bushra al-Khalil said Saddam's body was flown in a US military aircraft to Tikrit.

Yahya al-Atawi, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in Tikrit, said from the city 180 km north of Baghdad that Ali al-Nida had received the body.

Saddam's daughter, Raghd, in exile in Jordan, had earlier asked for her father's body to be flown to Yemen for a temporary burial there until it can be transferred back to Iraq for a proper family ceremony.

An adviser to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had earlier said the government wanted Saddam, 69, to be buried in a secret location in Iraq to prevent the site becoming a place of pilgrimage for rebels.

US troops are on alert for trouble from insurgents among Saddam's Sunni minority.

Brief prayer

Yesterday, his face uncovered, his demeanour calm, Saddam said a brief prayer as Iraqi policemen walked him to the gallows and put a noose around his neck.

After decades of fear, violence and a despotic rule, the end was brief as the former Iraqi leader was hanged at dawn in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

"It was very quick. He died right away," one of the official Iraqi witnesses told Reuters.

However, the execution did not end the violence in Iraq. Car bombs set off by suspected insurgents from Saddam's once dominant Sunni minority killed over 70 people in Baghdad and near the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, striking areas populated by Shi'ite Muslims oppressed for decades and now in the ascendancy.