Saddam Hussein executed at dawn

"It was very quick. He died right away," one of the official Iraqi witnesses told Reuters, saying the ousted president's face was uncovered, he appeared calm and said a brief prayer as Iraqi guards walked him to the gallows and put the noose round him.

"We heard his neck snap," Sami al-Askari, a political ally of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, told Reuters after the indoor execution at a Justice Ministry facility in northern Baghdad.

State television promised to air footage of the hanging in an apparent move to convince Iraqis their former leader is dead.

President Bush, who branded Saddam a tyrant and a threat to global security even though alleged nuclear and other weapons were not found after the 2003 invasion, hailed the execution as a "milestone" on Iraq's path to democracy.

The deaths of four troops pushed the American death toll to just four short of the emotive 3,000 mark. Bush already faces mounting public dismay at the war as Iraq slides toward all-out civil war between Saddam's fellow Sunnis and majority Shi'ites.

Despite fears of a backlash from Sunni insurgents, initial reactions were fairly muted as Iraqis woke to begin a week of religious holidays for Eid al-Adha. Unlike at previous times of tension, no curfew was imposed on Baghdad after the execution.

Jubilant Shi'ites, oppressed under Saddam, danced in the streets of their holy city of Najaf and cars blared their horns in procession through Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City slum.

The main Sunni television channel in the capital ignored the news entirely while the state broadcaster ran graphic footage of Saddam's agents beheading and beating their victims.

As day broke on one of the holiest dates of the Muslim year and the call to prayer echoed out from minarets across a dark and bitterly cold Baghdad, officially backed television channels had flashed the news shortly after 6 a.m. (0300 GMT).

"He seemed very calm. He did not tremble," one senior witness to the execution told Reuters. Saddam, 69, was bound and shackled but his face was uncovered as he met his death.

The former president recited the Muslim profession of faith "There is no God but God and Mohammed is his prophet" but made no other remark as uniformed guards took him to the scaffold.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told state television Saddam seemed to him "a broken man" on the gallows. Reuters