Hussein brothers buried in Saddam's hometown

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Leaders of Saddam Hussein's tribe buried the ousted dictator's sons, Odai and Qusai, and a grandson Saturday, their bodies wrapped in Iraqi flags in a sign the family considered them to be martyrs.

Shortly afterward there were three remote-controlled bomb explosions targeting passing American convoys and two U.S. soldiers were injured.

American forces had stood by at a distance as the bodies were buried in the stony soil of in the suburban village of al-Uja, where Saddam was born. It was not immediately clear if the American forces that came under attack had played any role in keeping a distant cordon around the funeral.

Also Saturday, the military said a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on their convoy east of Baghdad on Friday.

The Arab satellite television broadcaster Al-Jazeera reported that another U.S. soldier died Saturday morning in an attack north of the capital, but the military had no details on the incident.

Odai and Qusai -- two of the most powerful and feared men in Saddam's regime after their father -- were buried in a family cemetery in al-Uja, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society and the U.S. military said.

Buried with them was 14-year-old Mustafa Hussein, Qusai's son, who also was killed in a fierce gunbattle with U.S. troops July 22 in Mosul, the northernmost Iraqi big city.

Wanted it over with

Al-Uja residents criticized the U.S. military for not burying the bodies earlier.

"Burying them is just giving them their rights," said student Ali Ahmad.

Lt. Col. Steve Russell from the 4th Infantry Division, said tribal leaders contacted the army on Friday to tell them the bodies would be arriving.

"The people of al-Uja just wanted it over with, they didn't want to make a big deal about it," Russell said. "One of the sheiks was very nervous about it all and came to our forces pleading that we be aware so nothing would happen to the people of al-Uja."

The army flew the bodies into an airfield just north of Tikrit, and sent them in ambulances to the cemetery, Russell said. About 20 cars passed through an already established military checkpoint to reach the burial ground.

Iraqi Red Crescent Society president Jamal al-Karboli said his organization was approached by Saddam relatives four days ago, asking it to act as an intermediary in recovering the bodies.

The bodies of the two men had been held in refrigeration at the U.S. base at Baghdad International Airport where they were prepared for burial according to Western -- not Muslim -- customs.

The autopsies triggered a controversy, as Muslim tradition calls for bodies not to be embalmed or retouched and for them to be buried before sundown on the day of death.

U.S. military morticians had reconstructed the brothers' faces to look as lifelike as possible, and allowed Western journalists to videotape and photograph them, after Iraqi civilians were skeptical that Odai and Qusai were really dead.

Images of the autopsied bodies were flashed across the Arab world by satellite broadcasters, dispelling doubts raised by still photographs of the brothers released shortly after their deaths in which their faces were obscured by heavy beards, blood and gashes.

The Tigris River city of Tikrit remains one of the least pacified areas in the country. It sits squarely in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" north and west of Baghdad, where remnants of Saddam loyalists have conducted a guerrilla war against American occupation forces.

The U.S. military also announced Saturday that U.S. soldiers firing in self-defense had killed a woman Friday who was standing near where attackers dropped an explosive from an overpass onto a U.S. convoy below.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Associated Press reporters D'arcy Doran in Tikrit and Sabah Jerges in al-Uja contributed to this report.