Betraying no hint of regret, a composed-looking Saddam refused a black hood over his head before masked hangmen placed the noose around his neck, a Shi'ite Muslim politician who witnessed the execution said. "It was very quick. He died right away, " one of the official Iraqi witnesses said, saying the ousted president, who was bound but wore no blindfold, had said a brief prayer.

"We heard his neck snap, " Sami al-Askari, an ally of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki, said after the indoor execution at a former military intelligence headquarters in northern Baghdad, where Saddam himself had executed his opponents.

A Shi'ite-run channel aired grainy film of the body in a white shroud, showing Saddam, who was 69, lying with his neck twisted with what appeared to be blood or a bruise on his cheek.

Askari said Saddam is likely to be buried secretly in Iraq after the government rejected a family request for the body.

As Maliki's fellow Shi'ites, oppressed under Saddam, celebrated in the streets, the prime minister called on the former president's Sunni Baathists to end their insurgency. "Saddam's execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship, " said Maliki, seen on television signing the order with red ink for a hanging he did not attend.

But there was little sign of an end to the violence. 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. A triple car bombing killed 25 in a Shi'ite district of the capital.

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