The Bush administration today sent conflicting signals about the taunting and baiting that accompanied Saddam Hussein’s execution as the White House did not join criticism of the former Iraqi president’s hanging and the state department and US military raised questions about it.

An adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki today said the person who made the leaked video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging had been detained.

Iraq’s prime minister has ordered an investigation into Saddam Hussein’s execution to try to uncover who taunted the former dictator in the last minutes of his life, and who leaked footage taken by camera phone of the hanging.

The prime minister of Iraq today ordered an investigation into the conduct of Saddam Hussein’s execution in a bid to learn who in the group of witnesses taunted the former Iraqi leader in the last minutes of his life and leaked a mobile-phone video of his death to an Arab satellite television station and website.

Rage over the hanging of Saddam Hussein spilled into the streets in many parts of the Sunni Muslim heartland today, especially in Samarra where a mob of angry protesters broke the locks off the badly damaged Shiite Golden Dome mosque and marched through carrying a mock coffin and photo of the executed former leader.

AIDES of a radical Shi’ite cleric met yesterday with a key Sunni group seeking to ease sectarian tensions in Iraq, while gunmen killed a top trade ministry official as a spree of violence that followed the announcement of a new government entered its fourth week.

Delegates at Iraq’s National Conference called on radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to abandon his uprising against US and Iraqi troops and pull his fighters out of a holy shrine in Najaf.

BACKED by helicopters US tanks charged into Najaf yesterday and blasted positions held by fighters loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who condemned the US in a sermon.