US forces today captured a bearded and haggard-looking Saddam Hussein in an underground hideout on a farm near his hometown, Tikrit.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we got him," Paul Bremer, the civilian head of Iraq's US-led administration, told a news conference. "The tyrant is a prisoner."
In a televised address this afternoon, the US president, George Bush, said that Saddam will face "the justice he denied to millions".
He said that the former Iraqi leader's arrest "marks the end of the road for him and all who bullied and killed in his name". However, Mr Bush also cautioned that it does not mean the end of violence in Iraq.
"In the history of Iraq, a dark and painful era is over. A hopeful day has arrived," he said.
The arrest comes eight months after US troops swept into the Iraqi capital, and brings an end to one of the most intensive manhunts in history.
Radio stations in Baghdad played celebratory music, residents fired small arms in the air in celebration, and passengers on buses and trucks shouted: "They got Saddam! They got Saddam!"
Saddam was captured without a shot being fired at 8.30pm local time (1730 GMT) in a walled farm compound in Adwar, a town 10 miles from Tikrit.
The underground hideout was little more than a specially-prepared "spider hole", with just enough space for a man to lie down, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the top US military commander in Iraq, said. He added that bricks and dirt camouflaged the entrance to the hiding place.
Video footage of the former Iraqi president undergoing a medical examination after he had been captured showed a dishevelled figure with unkempt dark hair and a thick beard that had become grey.
$750,000 (£430,000) in $100 notes, two AK47s and a taxi were also found in the compound.
Saddam was discovered along with two supporters, but Lt Gen Sanchez said DNA tests had not yet proved their identities. The two men were "fairly insignificant" regime figures, a US defence official said.
Saddam 'has been cooperative'
Lt Gen Sanchez, who saw Saddam overnight, said the deposed leader "has been cooperative and is talkative". He described Saddam as "a tired man, a man resigned to his fate".
However Adel Abdel-Mahdi, a senior official of a Shia political party who, along with other Iraqi leaders, visited Saddam in captivity, said that the toppled dictator was "unrepentant and defiant".
"When we told him, 'if you go to the streets now, you will see the people celebrating,' he answered, 'those are mobs.' When we told him about the mass graves, he replied, 'those are thieves', Mr Abdel-Mahdi said.
"He didn't seem apologetic. He seemed defiant, trying to find excuses for the crimes in the same way he did in the past," he added.
Major General Ray Odierno, the commander of 4th infantry division - which participated in what the US military called "Operation Red Dawn" to capture Saddam - said the ousted dictator had a pistol but did not attempt to use it.
At a news conference in Tikrit, he described how US forces were able to determine Saddam's location, saying: "We tried to work through family and tribal ties that might have been close to Saddam Hussein." Finally, he said, US forces had received good information from one of the five to 10 individuals who had come forward.
Maj Gen Odierno said Saddam did not appear to be directly organising resistance, noting that no communication devices were found in his hiding place. "I believe he was there more for moral support," he said.
A Pentagon diagram showed the hiding place as a 6ft-deep vertical tunnel, with a shorter tunnel branching out horizontally from one side. A pipe to the concrete surface at ground level provided air.
The entrance to the hideout was under the floor of a small, walled compound, with a room in one corner and a lean-to attached to the room. The tunnel was roughly in the middle of the compound.
"He was just caught like a rat," Maj Gen Odierno said at the press conference in one of Saddam's nearby grandiose palaces on the Tigris river.
DNA tests confirm identity
A US defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Saddam had admitted his identity when captured.
DNA tests had confirmed the identity, the president of Iraqi governing council, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, said.
Coalition officials had privately said that they did not expect Saddam to be taken alive, assuming that he would rather die than be captured.
Many Iraqis - both opponents of Saddam and the insurgents who fought for his return - agreed with that opinion.
The former Iraqi president had not been seen since US forces entered Baghdad, in April. Despite the high-profile and bloody operation to kill his sons, and the capture of many of the former regime's most senior figures, Saddam had proved elusive.
In hiding, he kept up a flow of defiant taped messages urging Iraqis to fight US-led forces.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said: "The Iraqi people can finally be assured that Saddam Hussein will not be coming back - they can see it for themselves.
"The president believes this is very good news for the Iraqi people. Saddam Hussein was a brutal, oppressive dictator, responsible for decades of atrocities."
World leaders welcome capture
Leaders of US allies in Iraq and nations opposed to the war - including France and Germany - welcomed the capture.
The prime minister, Tony Blair, said that Saddam would be put on trial by an Iraqi court. He said that the former Iraqi leader's capture "removes the shadow" over Iraq as he gave early confirmation of the arrest.
"We can put the past behind us. Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about unity, reconciliation and peace between all the people of Iraq," Mr Blair said in a later address.
It is thought that Saddam's capture could break the spirit of some of his diehard supporters and ease the anxieties of many Iraqis that Saddam would return to suppress them.
"His arrest will put an end to military and terrorist attacks and the Iraqi nation will achieve stability," said Amar al-Hakin, a senior member of the Shia political party the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
However, there are also fears that the capture could provoke further attacks by insurgents.
Lt Gen Sanchez said Saddam's capture would not end the campaign against US-led forces in Iraq. "We do not expect, at this point in time, that we will have a complete elimination of those attacks," he said.
US officials will also hope to extract intelligence on the alleged weapons programmes that the US and UK went to war to stop but which, as yet, have not been discovered.