President Bush vowed yesterday that Saddam Hussein would face the "justice he denied to millions," but warned Americans that the capture of the former Iraqi dictator would not end the violence in Iraq.
The former Iraqi leader was apprehended shortly after 8 p.m. on Saturday evening during a search by a 600-strong US force of a village near his birthplace of Uja.
He was concealed in a tiny chamber under a polystyrene panel beneath the carpet of a mud-walled hut.
The troops did not at first recognise the long-haired and bearded man inside but under questioning he said he was Saddam Hussein, US officials said.
He was armed with a pistol, which he made no attempt to use, and had $750,000 in a suitcase.
Time magazine reported on its website last night that Saddam was being questioned in a holding cell at Baghdad airport, where he had told his American interrogators that Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Bush addressed the nation just after midday yesterday, hailing the arrest as crucial to the rise of a free Iraq and the end of a "dark and painful era" in the country's history.
"It marks the end of the road for him, and for all who bullied and killed in his name," Mr Bush said. For the "Baathist holdouts largely responsible for the current violence" there would be no return to power and Iraqis could be assured that the torture chambers and the secret police were gone forever.
Mr Bush warned, however: "We still face terrorists who would rather go on killing the innocent than accept the rise of liberty in the heart of the Middle East. Such men are a direct threat to the American people, and they will be defeated."
Mr Bush was first told the news by US Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, while at Camp David on Saturday afternoon, and it was confirmed to him by his National Security Adviser, Ms Condoleezza Rice in a call at 5.14 a.m. yesterday, a White House official said.
Mr Bush telephoned his principal allies on Iraq, British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and Spanish Prime Minister, Mr Jose Maria Aznar, to relay the news and also called the leaders of Italy, Australia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel as well at the acting president of the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council, Mr Adnan Pachachi.
Mr Bush told Mr Pachachi that he was "particularly moved" by the joyful outburst of several Iraqis who shouted "Death to Saddam!" at a televised press conference in Baghdad.
US Iraq administrator Mr Paul Bremer, began the press conference by announcing: "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him. . . The tyrant is a prisoner."
Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the top US military commander in Iraq, described Saddam as talkative and cooperative.
He is expected to be questioned about the insurgency and allegations of pre-war stocks of unconventional weapons.
The White House said it had not yet been decided how or when Saddam Hussein would face trial. Human Rights Watch last night urged the US authorities to ensure there was no "show trial" and that international jurists took part.
The celebrations in Baghdad had a somewhat furtive air as Iraqis tempered their celebrations with a desire not to be seen condoning the US occupation.
One woman in an Islamic headscarf remarked optimistically: "Now that Saddam s gone, the Ali Babas \ and kidnappers will disappear. The foreign terrorists will leave because they know they have no chance to come to power now that he is taken."
Communists drove around in cars flying red flags and Shia religious parties and secular nationalists held celebrations in their party offices.
Guards at the tower block of the Kurdish Democratic Party fired salvos from automatic weapons.
Reaction in the US was uniformly jubilant.
Democratic frontrunner Mr Howard Dean, who opposed the war, acknowledged the capture could change "the course of the occupation of Iraq".
The news was marred by a suicide car bomb that killed up to 20 people at a police station at Khaldiyah, 50 miles west of Baghdad, and the death of an American soldier trying to defuse a roadside bomb.