Al-Awja ( ar, العوجة) is a

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

8 miles (13 km) south of

Tikrit Tikrit ( ar, تِكْرِيت ''Tikrīt'' , Syriac: ܬܲܓܪܝܼܬܼ ''Tagrīṯ'') is a city in Iraq, located northwest of Baghdad and southeast of Mosul on the Tigris River. It is the administrative center of the Saladin Governorate. , it h ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

on the western bank of the

Tigris The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the ...

. It is mainly inhabited by Sunni Arabs. The village is known for being the hometown and place of burial of former Iraqi President

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...

. When Saddam was captured by

Task Force 121 Task Force 121 was a United States Department of Defense special operations task force. TF121 was a multi-service force from Joint Special Operations Command, made up of operators from the U.S. Army's Delta Force, 75th Ranger Regiment, and ...

and 4th Infantry Division during Operation Red Dawn, he was hidden only a few miles from his hometown of

Ad-Dawr Ad-Dawr ( ar, الدور) is a small agricultural town in Saladin Governorate, Iraq, near Tikrit. It includes a great number of people from 4 tribes, al-Shuwaykhat, al-Mawashet, al-Bu Haydar and al-Bu Mdallal. Al-Mawashet tribe is famous for sup ...

. Saddam Hussein was buried in this village before dawn on December 31, 2006, less than 24 hours after his

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

took place. During the fighting in the Second Battle of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's tomb was levelled by

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kin ...

. After Iraqi forces took control of the village, Shia militiamen of the

Popular Mobilization Committee The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) ( ar, الحشد الشعبي ''al-Ḥashd ash-Shaʿbī''), also known as the People's Mobilization Committee (PMC) and the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), is an Iraqi state-sponsored umbrella organization ...

put its insignia around the village, including that of Major General Qassem Soleimani.

References

{{Iraq-geo-stub Awja Populated places on the Tigris River Saddam Hussein