Take a look back at the defining moments from Iraq in 2006.
The world reacts with celebration and anger to the death of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
NBC News and news services
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm.
In a final moment of defiance, he refused a hood to cover his eyes.
Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.
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Witnesses to the execution told NBC News’ Richard Engel that they were cheering around the body of Saddam after the hanging — three years after the deposed president was hauled from a hole in the ground by pursuing U.S. forces.
Click for related content Editor’s note on Saddam images
Asked if Saddam were dead, the official in the Iraqi prime minister’s office said, “Yes, the body of Saddam Hussein is in front of me.” The hanging reportedly occurred at 6:05 a.m. local time (10:05 p.m. ET).
NBC could hear cheers and celebrations in the background while talking to an official in the prime minister’s office.
“This son of a bitch is lying under my feet. … I can’t talk now because of all the cheers!” a witness said.
Saddam’s body will be buried in Tikrit, his family’s hometown, a defense lawyer said. The burial could be as soon as Sunday.
Disbelief over death
A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam’s conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because “everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed.”
“Now, he is in the garbage of history,” said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.
The post-execution footage showed the man identified as Saddam lying on a stretcher, covered in a white shroud. His neck and part of the shroud have what appear to be bloodstains. His eyes are closed.
In Baghdad’s Shiite enclave of Sadr City, hundreds of people danced in the streets while others fired guns in the air to celebrate. The government did not impose a round-the-clock curfew as it did last month when Saddam was convicted to thwart any surge in retaliatory violence.
It was a grim end for the 69-year-old leader who had vexed three U.S. presidents. Despite his ouster, Washington, its allies and the new Iraqi leaders remain mired in a fight to quell a stubborn insurgency by Saddam loyalists and a vicious sectarian conflict.
The execution took place during the year’s deadliest month for U.S. troops, with the toll reaching 109. At least 2,998 members of the U.S. military have been killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
President Bush said in a statement issued from his ranch in Texas that bringing Saddam to justice “is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself, and be an ally in the war on terror.”
He said that the execution marks the “end of a difficult year for the Iraqi people and for our troops” and cautioned that Saddam’s death will not halt the violence in Iraq.
Violence follows execution
Within hours of his death, bombings killed at least 68 people in Iraq, including one planted on a minibus that exploded in a fish market in a mostly Shiite town south of Baghdad.
Ali Hamza, a 30-year-old university professor, said he went outside to shoot his gun into the air after he learned of Saddam’s death.
“Now all the victims’ families will be happy because Saddam got his just sentence,” said Hamza, who lives in Diwaniyah, a Shiite town 80 miles south of Baghdad.
But people in the Sunni-dominated city of Tikrit, once a power base of Saddam, lamented his death.
“The president, the leader Saddam Hussein is a martyr and God will put him along with other martyrs. Do not be sad nor complain because he has died the death of a holy warrior,” said Sheik Yahya al-Attawi, a cleric at the Saddam Big Mosque.
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 of Tikrit, 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 people took to the streets protesting the execution of Saddam.
A couple hundred people also protested the execution just outside the Anbar capital of Ramadi, and more than 2,000 people demonstrated in Adwar, the village south of Tikrit where Saddam was captured by U.S. troops hiding in an underground bunker.
In a statement, Saddam’s lawyers said that in the aftermath of his death, “the world will know that Saddam Hussein lived honestly, died honestly, and maintained his principles.”
“He did not lie when he declared his trial null,” they said.
'Special day' reserved for hanging
Saddam’s half-brother Barzan Ibrahim and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, the former chief justice of the Revolutionary Court, were not hanged along with their former leader as originally planned. Officials wanted to reserve the occasion for Saddam alone.
“We wanted him to be executed on a special day,” National Security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told state-run al-Iraqiya television.
Sami al-Askari, the political adviser of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, told the AP that Saddam initially resisted when he was taken by Iraqi guards but was composed in his final moments.
He said Saddam was clad in a black suit, hat and shoes, rather than prison garb. His hat was removed and his hands tied shortly before the noose was slipped around his neck.
Saddam repeated a prayer after a Sunni Muslim cleric who was present.
“Saddam later was taken to the gallows and refused to have his head covered with a hood,” al-Askari said. “Before the rope was put around his neck, Saddam shouted: ’God is great. The nation will be victorious and Palestine is Arab.”’
Iraqi state television showed footage of guards in ski masks placing a noose around Saddam’s neck. Saddam appeared calm as he stood on the metal framework of the gallows. The footage cuts off just before the execution.
Saddam was executed at a former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad’s Shiite neighborhood of Kazimiyah, al-Askari said. During his regime, Saddam had numerous dissidents executed in the facility, located in a neighborhood that is home to the Iraqi capital’s most important Shiite shrine — the Imam Kazim shrine.
Saddam Hussein is reported by BBC to be already executed, at around 6:05 Baghdad time today.

10:22PM EST, CBS broke into Friday night coverage to report Saddam was executed.

As of 10:00PM EST, the nation of Iraq was awaiting word of Saddam's execution. 

The custody of Saddam Hussein has been turned over to the Iraqi government and a judge, who is to be present during the execution of the former Iraqi dictator, says that the execution will take place no later than Saturday.

One of Nouri al-Maliki's advisers has stated that the execution will be carried out by 6 a.m. on Saturday (10 p.m. Friday EST).

"A few minutes ago we received correspondence from the Americans saying that President Saddam Hussein is no longer under the control of United States forces," said a statement by Hussein's lawyers.

At least one judge has stated that the execution could take place as early as "today."

"Saddam will be executed today or tomorrow. All the measures have been done," said Munir Haddad, an appeal's court judge who upheld the vedict to have Hussein executed. Mr. Haddad is expected to be present during Hussein's execution.

"I am ready to attend and there is no reason for delay," added Haddad.

Not everyone agrees that Hussein should be executed. The Prime Minister of Yemen is trying to urge U.S. President George W. Bush to stop the execution from taking place.

"The Yemeni government urges Bush to intercede to prevent this sentence from being carried out ... as it would lead to more internal strife and suffering for the Iraqi people," said a letter to Bush from Yemeni P.M., Abdul-Qader Bagammal.

He is expected to be hanged on a custom-made gallows that has been kept in Camp Cropper, a U.S. military prison at Baghdad airport where Hussein has been imprisoned.