Executed Hussein deputy is buried

Taha Yassin Ramadan was the third member of Hussein's inner circle executed since the deposed president was taken to the gallows Dec. 30 after being convicted of crimes against humanity. The executions come at a time of deepening disaffection among the Sunni minority, which was dominant under Hussein and has driven the anti-U.S. insurgency.

Under mounting American pressure to reach out to Sunnis, Iraq's Shiite-led Cabinet on Tuesday offered jobs and retirement benefits to former officers whose livelihoods were wiped out when U.S. authorities disbanded Hussein's security forces in 2003. Many became willing recruits in militant groups, contributing to the violence that has pushed the death toll since the March 20, 2003, invasion to more than 3,200 U.S. forces and an estimated 60,000 Iraqis.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed and a third was wounded Tuesday when a roadside bomb hit their vehicle during a patrol in support of the latest Baghdad security crackdown, the military announced.

Ramadan, a Kurd, had asked to be buried near Hussein in Al Auja, the small northern town where the former leader was born, his lawyers said.

Attorney Badr Awad Bandar, who witnessed the predawn execution, accompanied the body on a U.S. helicopter to Tikrit, where he said Iraqi police draped the national flag over the coffin and drove it to the nearby gravesite. About 1,500 people, most of them members of Hussein's tribe, received the body at the town's entrance, saluting its arrival with gunfire, he said.

Ramadan's remains were placed in a grave next to those of Hussein's two sons, a grandson and two aides in a garden outside the hall where the late president is buried.

"This is the result of the so-called freedom brought and promoted by the Americans and their allies," said mourner Mohammed Khatab, a 37-year-old teacher. "It has been four years under the occupation, and the only results we have are destruction, insecurity and the weeping of widows and orphans."