BAGHDAD, March 20: Iraq hanged Saddam Hussein's former deputy Taha Yassin Ramadan on Tuesday as the nation entered the fifth year of the US-led war still battling a raging insurgency and sectarian conflict.

Former vice president Ramadan was executed before dawn, less than three months after the feared former dictator was himself hanged. Both had been convicted for crimes against humanity over the killing of 148 Shiites in the 1980s.

“Ramadan was hanged at 3:05 am (0005 GMT) today,” said Bassem Ridha, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Ramadan, aged almost 70, was the fourth regime official to be executed for his role in the killings of the Shiites from the village of Dujail after an attempt on Saddam's life there in 1982.

“The execution was smooth with no violation,” Ridha said, after an international outcry over the manner of the previous hangings of Saddam and his former cohorts.

Footage of Saddam being taunted then executed on December 30 was circulated on the Internet.

The January 15 hanging of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti -- Saddam's half-brother and head of the feared secret police -- was particularly gruesome, with his head ripping from the body as he plunged through the metal trap door.

Ramadan “was very calm and composed. He asked his family and friends to pray for him and said that he was not afraid of death,” defence lawyer Badie Aref said before his execution.

The former vice president was later on Tuesday buried in Saddam's home village of Awja in northern Iraq outside a hall in which the dictator himself is laid to rest.

“The body of Ramadan was washed and then buried in the garden of the hall next to the graves of Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar,” Sheikh Ali Nidr from Saddam's tribe told AFP, adding that his body was transported from Baghdad in a US helicopter.

Iraqi leaders say they are determined to punish officials from Saddam's Sunni-led regime, whose supporters are blamed for much of the continuing bloodletting.

On Tuesday, four car bombs in Baghdad killed nine people and wounded dozens, a day after at least 55 people were killed or found murdered in Iraq.

Earlier in the day, Iraqi security forces killed 39 “terrorists” in a battle in the western Sunni province of Al-Anbar, Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf, director of the operations centre in the interior ministry, told AFP.

US President George W. Bush, facing growing opposition to the war at home, said it would take months to secure the violence-plagued capital and warned that a troop pullout now would be “devastating”.

In the four years since the launch of the “shock and awe” military campaign on March 20, 2003, Iraq has descended into a sectarian hell that has left tens of thousands of civilians dead.

Bush pleaded for patience on Monday with his unpopular Iraq strategy and Washington's revamped efforts to restore order.—APP