PAKISTAN TIMES Iraqi women protest while others carry posters of the former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in Al-Dor, 115 kilometers (70 miles) north of Baghdad on Monday, Jan. 1, 2007.

 taunted Saddam Hussein on the gallows, turning his execution into a televised spectacle that has inflamed sectarian anger.

A senior Iraqi official told Reuters the U.S. ambassador tried to persuade Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki not to rush into hanging the former president just four days after his appeal was turned down, urging the government two wait another two weeks.

News of the ousted strongman's death on Saturday and of his treatment by officials of the Shi'ite-led government was blamed by one witness for sparking a prison riot among mainly Sunni Arab inmates at a jail near the northern city of Mosul.

An adviser to Maliki, Sami al-Askari, told Reuters: "There were a few guards who shouted slogans that were inappropriate and that's now the subject of a government investigation."

The government released video showing the hangman chatting to a composed Saddam as he placed the noose round his neck.

But mobile phone footage on the Web showed guards shouting "Go to hell!," chanting the name of a Shi'ite militia leader and exchanging insults with Saddam before he fell through the trap in mid-prayer and his body swung, broken-necked, on the rope.

Saddam's exiled eldest daughter and even some residents of Dujail, the Shi'ite town whose sufferings led to his conviction for crimes against humanity, joined mourning rituals for him, most of these concentrated among Sunni Arabs in Saddam's home region north of Baghdad where he was buried on Sunday.

Prison Riot

Mourners continued to arrive at his native village of Awja, near Tikrit. His daughter Raghd, who helped finance his defense from her strictly supervised exile in Jordan, joined several hundred people in the capital Amman in a show of solidarity.

Iraqi troops and police rushed to Mosul's Padush prison to put down a riot after visitors broke news of Saddam's treatment. The governor said seven guards and three prisoners were injured although a visitor reported gunfire and the death of an inmate.

There has been no significant repeat of the series of car bombings that killed over 70 people in Shi'ite neighborhoods on Saturday within hours of the dawn execution, but the government and U.S. forces are on alert for the kind of sectarian violence that has pitched Iraq toward civil war since Saddam's overthrow.

The Interior Ministry ordered the closure of another Iraqi television channel, Sharkiya, accusing it of fomenting hatred. The channel, owned by a London-based businessman who was once an official under Saddam, continued broadcasting from Dubai.

The government has taken similar measures against several channels, all with perceived Sunni leanings.

Wave of Protests

Rage over the hanging of Saddam Hussein spilled into the streets in many parts of the Sunni Muslim heartland Monday, 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.

The Samarra protest was particularly significant because it signaled a widening expression of defiance among Sunnis, the minority Muslim sect in Iraq that had enjoyed special status and power under Saddam and had oppressed the now-ascendant Shiite majority for centuries.

Until Saddam was executed, excluding a few days of protests after his death sentence was handed down Nov. 5, the broader Sunni population had sought a low profile in the sectarian conflict that had seen thousands of them killed or driven from their homes by Shiite militia forces since the Samarra bombing Feb. 22.

In northern Baghdad, hundreds of Sunnis conducted a demonstration to mourn Saddam in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood.

"The Baath party and Baathists still exist in Iraq, and nobody can marginalize it," said Samir al-Obaidi, 48, who attended a Saddam memorial in the Azamiyah neighborhood.

In Dor, 77 miles north of Baghdad, hundreds more took to the streets to inaugurate a giant mosaic of Saddam. Children carried toy guns and men fired into the air.

Mourners at a mosque in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit slaughtered sheep as a sacrifice for their former leader. The mosque's walls were lined with condolence cards from tribes in southern Iraq and Jordan who were unable to travel to the memorial.

Saddam's eldest daughter briefly attended a protest Monday in Amman — her first public appearance since her father was hanged.

Raghad Saddam Hussein stopped in at the demonstration staged by the Professional Associations, a body that groups unions for doctors, engineers and lawyers, in its office parking lot in west Amman.

"God bless you, and I thank you for honoring Saddam, the martyr," two witnesses recalled Raghad Saddam Hussein as telling the protesters, who included a junior Cabinet minister, on her arrival. She left a minute later.

Killings

Also, U.S. forces killed six people in a raid on the Baghdad offices of a top Sunni politician, Saleh al-Mutlaq, on suspicion it was being used as an al-Qaida safe house, the military and Iraqi police said.

The U.S. military said took on heavy fire from automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades as they sought to enter the building. Al-Mutlaq is a senior member of the National Dialogue Front, which holds 11 of the 275 seats in Iraq's parliament.

Police said the raid also took place near the home of Salama al-Khafaji, a former Shiite parliamentarian who abandoned her residence after escaping an assassination attempt last year.

Ground troops were backed by helicopters that "engaged the enemy with precision point target machine gun fire," the military said. It was unclear whether the deaths resulted from the ground assault or fire from U.S. helicopters.

Police reported finding the bodies of 40 handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-riddled bodies in Baghdad on the first day of the New Year. A police official, who refused to be named out of security fears, said "15 of these bodies found in one place," the largely industrial Sheik Omar district in northern Baghdad.

Otherwise the there were no reported violent deaths in the country Monday with the exception of the shooting death of an Iraqi worker for Algerian Embassy in Baghdad.

Also Monday, the Iraqi government sealed the offices of a privately owned television station, charging it had incited violence and hatred in its programming.

A journalist for Al-Sharqiya station, which broadcasts from Dubai, said the station closed its Baghdad office three months ago because of attacks on its staff.

"The channel administration decided to close it for security reasons," said the journalist, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns.

Al-Sharqiya remained on the air late Monday. The station is owned by Saad al-Bazzaz, a one-time chief of radio and television for Saddam.