Saddam Hussein was buried in the dead of night early yesterday in his native village Awja, near Tikrit in northern Iraq, local officials and family sources said. New, grainy images appeared on the Internet showing the former Iraqi president being hanged in Baghdad less than 24 hours earlier, showing his body dropping through the trap, something the officially released video had not shown.

Mohammed al-Qaisi, governor of the local Salahaddin region, told Reuters he attended the funeral, which began at 3:05 a.m. (00:05 GMT) and lasted about 25 minutes. Also present was Ali al-Nida, head of Saddam?s Albu Nasir tribe.

A source close to Saddam?s family also confirmed his remains were interred at Awja, where his sons Uday and Qusay, killed by US troops in 2003, lie in a family plot in the cemetery. The family had said on Saturday it wanted him buried in the western city of Ramadi, another stronghold of the Sunni insurgency.

A source close to leading local Sunni Muslim clerics who took part in the proceedings said US and Iraqi troops kept a close guard over the event and insisted on a burial in the grounds of a mosque erected by Saddam in the 1980s.

Arab television stations broadcast new video images of Saddam?s hanging, apparently shot on a low-quality camera by guards or other officials at the execution. One video on the Internet shows Saddam drop through the trap while still intoning the Muslim profession of faith. He was abruptly cut off in the second verse: ?I bear witness that Mohammad...? He was also shown hanging, with his eyes open.

The new video also bore out witness comments on Saturday that the 69-year-old former strongman, who looked calm and composed as he stood on the gallows, had shouted angry political slogans while masked guards were bringing him into the execution chamber once used by his own feared intelligence services. Grainy video also later showed his body in a white shroud, the neck twisted and blood on one cheek.

Tribal elders in Tikrit, on the Tigris river 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, took delivery of the body on Saturday, an Iraqi government source confirmed. A lawyer for Saddam said it was sent there aboard a U.S. military aircraft.

Sons buried in Awja

Awja is a small settlement of unusually grand homes, signs of the prosperity it enjoyed during the rule of its most famous son, born there in poverty in 1937. It seems Saddam will lie close to but not beside his sons, whom he groomed as successors. During three decades of harsh rule, clan members from around Tikrit in particular, and minority Sunni Muslim Arabs in general, played a dominating role at the expense of ethnic Kurds and of the Shi?ite majority that has taken control of government since the US invasion that overthrew Saddam.

While government officials had indicated he might lie in a secret, unmarked grave for fear the site could become a shrine and focal point for Baathist rebels, it appears they have taken the view that Uday and Qusay were buried there three years ago and the cemetery can be kept under surveillance.

Three decades after Saddam established his personal rule by force, his death closes a chapter in Iraq?s history marked by war with Iran and a 1990 invasion of Kuwait that turned him from ally to enemy of the United States and impoverished his oil-rich nation. But, as President Bush said in a statement, sectarian violence pushing Iraq toward civil war has not ended.

Car bombs set off by suspected Sunni insurgents killed more than 70 people in Baghdad and near the Shi?ite holy city of Najaf on Saturday. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, his fragile authority among fellow Shi?ites significantly enhanced after he forced through Saddam?s execution over hesitation among Sunni and Kurdish members of his government, reached out to Sunni rebels.

?Saddam?s execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship,? he said in a statement as state television showed film of him signing the death warrant in red ink. ?I urge ... followers of the ousted regime to reconsider their stance as the door is still open to anyone who has no innocent blood on his hands to help in rebuilding ... Iraq.?

Bush said that ?Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is an important milestone on Iraq?s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself.?

The U.S. death toll in Iraq is just two short of the emotive 3 000 mark and December is already the deadliest month for the Americans for more than two years. Bush has promised to unveil a new strategy in the new year.

Bombs in Shi?ite areas kill 72 after Saddam was hanged

■ Four car bombs targeting Shi?ites in Baghdad and a town south of the capital killed more than 70 people on Saturday, hours after Saddam Hussein was hanged amid fears of revenge by his Sunni Arab supporters.In Baghdad, three car bombs exploded in quick succession in the mainly Shi?ite neighborhood of Hurriya, killing 36 people and wounding 77, an Interior Ministry source said. Police in Kufa, near the Shi?ite holy city of Najaf, said 36 people were killed and 58 wounded by the car bomb at a market packed with shoppers ahead of the week-long Eid al-Adha holiday. They said a mob killed a man they accused of planting the bomb in the town about 160 km south of Baghdad. While the attacks may have been a swift response to the execution, such bombings are common in a country where at least 100 people die on average every day in bombings, mortar attacks and death squad killings. Though Saturday?s bombings may have been planned independently of the execution.They were typical of the cycle of sectarian violence that is driving both Shi?ites, Sunni Arabs and others from their homes, increasingly dividing Baghdad and surrounding areas on sectarian grounds.

Bombs frequently provoke reprisals from militias, whose practice is to kidnap, torture and shoot their victims, leaving the bodies dumped in places where they will intimidate. Saddam?s execution was welcome by Shi?ites and Kurds, who were oppressed under his rule, but many in the once dominant Sunni Arab minority were angry and all sides feared it could spark even more violence.

EU official: ?A barbaric hanging?

The European Union condemned Saddam Hussein?s execution on Saturday, with one top official calling it a barbaric act that could create an undeserved martyr of the former Iraqi president.

Highlighting a key difference with the United States, EU president Finland and several senior European Commission officials said the 25-member bloc opposes the death penalty as a matter of principle and that Saddam should not have been hanged in Baghdad at dawn despite his crimes. ?The EU has a very consistent view against using the death penalty and it should not have been used in this instance either, although there is no doubt over Saddam?s guilt of very serious crimes against humanity,? Finland?s Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja told YLE television.

EU countries have long abandoned capital punishment and advocate a universal ban on the death penalty. Louis Michel, a member of the EU?s executive Commission, said he believed capital punishment was at odds with the democracy Iraqi leaders were trying to build.

?You don?t fight barbarism with acts that I deem as barbaric. The death penalty is not compatible with democracy,? Michel, a former Belgian foreign minister, told Reuters.

?Unfortunately Saddam Hussein risks to appear as a martyr, and he does not deserve that. He is not a martyr, he committed the worst things,? Michel, told Reuters in a telephone interview. Key figures in the EU were however careful not to appear to be pardoning Saddam or criticizing Iraqi and US policy.

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, in charge of external relations at the European Commission, said: ?While the EU opposes capital punishment as a matter of principle, Saddam?s trial and punishment mean that those who commit crimes against humanity cannot escape justice.? She hoped that Saddam?s death would close «a long, painful chapter in the history of Iraq.»

?I hope that all Iraqi leaders will now find the wisdom and courage to join forces to end the violence and to build a future of stability and prosperity for their country and people,? she said in a statement.