BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraqis awoke yesterday to television images of a noose being slipped over Saddam Hussein’s neck and his white-shrouded body – the pre-dawn work of black-hooded hangmen.

The airwaves were cluttered with pictures of Saddam in death, a bruise on his cheek, his neck elongated and twisted impossibly to the right – grisly proof that the man who had tormented and killed so many during a bloody quarter-century rule was truly dead.

But some Iraqis – like 34-year-old Haider Hamed, a candy store owner in east Baghdad – wondered what would really change with the execution of Saddam, who was just four months shy of his 70th birthday.

“He’s gone, but our problems continue,” said the Shiite Muslim, whose uncle was killed in one of Saddam’s many brutal purges. “We brought problems on ourselves after Saddam because we began fighting Shiite on Sunni and Sunni on Shiite.”

Hamed’s musings were particularly cogent on a day when at least 68 Iraqis died in bombings and police said 12 more tortured bodies were found dumped in Baghdad. The US military announced six more service members – three soldiers and three Marines – were killed.

The execution took place on the penultimate day of the year’s deadliest month for US troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the US military have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to an AP count.

Celebratory gunfire erupted across Shiite neighbourhoods in Baghdad and other predominantly Shiite regions of the country. Men and boys danced in the streets of Sadr City, Baghdad’s sprawling Shiite slum and headquarters of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

But there was no immediate spasm of violence that had been feared and authorities imposed curfews sparingly in contrast to the several-day lockdown put in place after Saddam was sentenced to death November 5 for killing 148 Shiite Muslims after a failed assassination attempt against him in 1982 in the city of Dujail.

Joy at Saddam’s death fell on the Shiite side of Iraq’s increasingly bitter and bloody sectarian divide. Among minority Sunnis there was deep anger, born not only of Saddam’s execution but of the loss of their decades-long political and economic dominance that began with Saddam’s ouster in the US invasion nearly four years ago.

Outside the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital, loyalists marched with Saddam pictures and waved Iraqi flags. Defying curfews, hundreds took to the streets vowing revenge in Samarra, north of Baghdad, and gunmen paraded and fired into the air in support of Saddam in Tikrit, his hometown.

“The president, the leader, Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs,” said Yahya al-Attawi, who led prayer at a towering Sunni mosque constructed by Saddam in Tikrit, 130 kilometres (80 miles) north of Baghdad.

Arab satellite television channels said Saddam’s body had been returned to Tikrit for Sunday burial next to his sons Odai and Qusai in the main cemetery in the nearby town of Ouja, where Saddam was born. The sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the Americans in Mosul in July 2003.

Um Abdullah, a Sunni and teacher in Tikrit, said she would wear black to mourn the city’s favourite son.

“Saddam will be a hero in our eyes,” she said. “I have five kids and I will teach them to take revenge on Americans.”

Police blocked the entrances to Tikrit and said nobody was allowed to leave or enter the city for four days. Despite the security precaution, gunmen took to the streets, carrying pictures of Saddam, shooting into the air and calling for vengeance.

Security forces also set up roadblocks at the entrance to another Sunni stronghold, Samarra, and a curfew was imposed after about 500 went into the streets to protest the execution.

There were cheers at the cafeteria of a US outpost in Baghdad as soldiers having breakfast learned Saddam had been hung.

But members of the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, on patrol in an overwhelmingly Shiite neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad, said the execution wouldn’t get them home any faster – and therefore didn’t make much difference.

“Nothing really changes,” said Captain Dave Eastburn, 30, of Columbus, Ohio. “The militias run everything now, not Saddam.”

Staff Sergeant David Earp, who also fought in 1991’s Operation Desert Storm, said the execution worried him.

“In my opinion, something big is going to happen,” said Earp, of Colorado Springs, Colorado. “There will be a response. Probably not today because they know we are looking for one, but soon.”

Saddam went to his execution dressed in a black overcoat, dark trousers and a hat. It was unclear if he had been told in advance that he would be hanged just before dawn yesterday. He looked baffled and uncomprehending as one of the hangmen explained the procedure.

Saddam refused to put on a hood that was offered before a black cloth was wound around his neck and the noose draped over his head and tightened.