“Saddam’s execution puts an end to all the pathetic gambles on a return to dictatorship,” said Maliki. State television showed him signing the order for the hanging which officials said he did not attend.

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.

US President Bush, who called Saddam a threat though alleged nuclear and other weapons were never found, said: “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.” A White House spokesman said that Bush went to bed before the execution — at his Texas vacation ranch — and was not woken up after it was carried out.

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.

Popular reactions were fairly muted as Iraqis woke on the holiest day of the Muslim calendar to begin a week of religious holidays for Eid al-Adha. Unlike at previous times of tension, no curfew was imposed on Baghdad.

As Iraqis across the country were trying to process the scope of what had happened, early reactions mirrored the deep sectarian divide that has been driving much of that violence and threatens to pull the country apart.

... contd.