Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn yesterday for crimes against humanity after Iraq's prime minister rushed through an execution that delighted victims of Saddam's harsh rule.

The former President, toppled by the US invasion four years ago, was shown going calmly to his death on the scaffold in images of his last moments broadcast on state television.

"It was very quick. He died right away," one official witness told Reuters, adding that the body was left to hang for 10 minutes and death was recorded at 6.10 a.m.

The bearded Saddam, still robust at 69, refused a hood or to have a cleric present but did say a brief prayer before a short drop to oblivion on gallows once used by his own secret police.

Grainy video later showed his body in a white shroud, the neck twisted and blood on a cheek. An adviser to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said he would probably end up in a secret grave.

Three decades after Saddam established his personal rule by force, it closed 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 US President George W. Bush said in a statement, sectarian violence pushing Iraq towards civil war has not ended.

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.

But Maliki, his fragile authority among fellow Shi'ites enhanced after he forced through Saddam's killing over Sunni and Kurdish hesitation just four days after his appeal failed, reached out to Saddam's Sunni followers.

"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."

There is little prospect of peace from Al-Qaeda's Sunni Islamists but Maliki and Bush hope that more moderate Sunnis may choose negotiation over violence. As on November 5, when Saddam was sentenced over the deaths of 148 Shi'ites from the town of Dujail, reaction among the Sunni population was muted.

Unusually, the government did not even see a need for a curfew in Baghdad. Protests in Saddam's home town of Tikrit and in the Sunni west were small. Though resentful of a loss of influence and fearful of the rise of Iranian-backed Shi'ite militants, few Sunnis find much to mourn in Saddam's passing.

With violence killing hundreds every week, Iraqis have other worries. Even celebrations in Shi'ite cities and the Sadr City slum in Baghdad were brief and fairly restrained.

"It's a great joy that I can't even express," said Mohammad Kadhem, a journalist in the Shi'ite city of Basra. "I can't believe what I'm seeing on television - Saddam led to the gallows where he hanged tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis."

"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," said Bush, who has defended the 2003 invasion.

The deaths of six more soldiers pushed the US death toll to just two short of the emotive 3,000 mark as December became the deadliest month for Americans in Iraq for over two years. Bush has promised to unveil a new strategy in the new year.

The United Nations, the Vatican and Washington's European allies all condemned the execution on moral grounds.

Many Muslims, especially Sunnis, making the haj pilgrimage to Mecca were also outraged by the symbolism of hanging Saddam on the holiest day of the year at the start of Eid al-Adha - some Shi'ites also said his death was a suitable gift from God.

"There is no God but God and Mohammad is his prophet," Saddam intoned when asked to do so, according to a witness.

"We heard his neck snap," said Sami al-Askari, an adviser to Maliki. The prime minister himself, who fled Iraq as a young man in fear of his life from Saddam's agents, was not present.

A witness in the Dujail trial said he was shown the body at Maliki's office: "When I saw the body in the coffin, I cried. I remembered my three brothers and my father whom he had killed."

Saddam was convicted of killing, torture and other crimes against the population of Dujail after militants from Maliki's Dawa party tried to assassinate him there in 1982.

Many Kurds were disappointed that Saddam will not now also be convicted of genocide against them in a trial yet to finish.

Saddam Hussein executed

• Saddam Hussein was hanged at dawn yesterday in Baghdad for crimes against humanity, a dramatic, violent end for a leader who ruled Iraq by fear for three decades before he was toppled by a US invasion in 2003.

• "Saddam's execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship," said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who signed the order for the hanging.

• US President George W. Bush hailed a milestone for Iraqi democracy.

• The European Union, which opposes capital punishment, condemned the execution, with one official calling it a barbaric act that could create an undeserved martyr.

• Libya declared three days of mourning and cancelled public Eid holiday celebrations. Flags flew at half-mast.

• Saddam's Baath Party exhorted Iraqis to "strike without mercy" at the US occupiers and Shi'ite Iran to avenge his execution.

• At least 72 people are killed in a series of bomb attacks following Saddam's execution.

• December became the deadliest month for US troops in Iraq in two years. The US military reported six more combat deaths raising the December death toll to 109.

• Pilgrims in Mecca expressed outrage that Iraqi authorities chose to execute Saddam on a major religious holiday.

• Shi'ite Muslims, oppressed under Saddam, celebrated.

• A curfew was imposed in Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, where there were reports of sporadic clashes. Residents in Awja, the impoverished village where he was born, said Saddam was now a martyr in the fight against the US-backed government.

• State television aired film of Saddam, looking composed, as a masked hangman placed a noose around his neck on the indoor gallows. One channel later showed his body in a white shroud.

• "They left him hanging for around 10 minutes before a doctor confirmed his death and they untied him and placed him in a white bodybag," said witness Sami al-Askari.

• The former president will probably be buried secretly in Iraq after the government rejected a request to give the family the body, said Askari, an aide to Maliki.