BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein was buried at roughly 7 p.m. ET in Awja, his hometown near Tikrit, Al-Jazeera reported Saturday.
The news conflicts a previous report that Saddam's family said the former Iraqi leader would be buried in the Sunni insurgent town of Ramadi instead of near his hometown.
The family said Saddam's will requested he be buried in his hometown Awja or in Ramadi, and the family decided Ramadi would be his burial site due to private reasons and Iraq's security situation, Reuters reported via a family statement.
However, Al-Arabiya satellite television reported before that a delegation including the governor of Salahuddin Province and the head of Saddam's clan retrieved his body from Baghdad and took it for burial near the executed dictator's hometown on Sunday.
Al-Arabiya said Salahuddin provincial governor Hamad Hamoud Shagtti and Sheik Ali al-Nidawi, leader Saddam's of the Albu-Nassir clan, had negotiated with U.S. and Iraqi officials to be able to bury the executed leader's body near where he was born, the village of Ouja which is near Tikrit, 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Baghdad.
The report said the clan had gathered at the grand mosque in Ouja to await the return of Saddam's remains.
He was captured in an underground hideout near the village on Dec. 13, 2003, eight months after he fled Baghdad ahead of advancing American troops.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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