Iraq executed former President Saddam Hussein on Saturday, about two months after he was sentenced in Baghdad to hang for his role in the killings of 148 Shiite Muslims in Dujail in 1982, according to Iraqi state-run television Iraqiya.

Iraq's Supreme Court of Appeals last Tuesday rejected an appeal by the 69-year-old former president, who was ousted in April 2003 by a U.S.- led invasion, against the death penalty given at the High Tribunal on Nov. 5.

The Dujail residents were all killed after Iraq's leadership decided people from the town had been behind a plot to assassinate Saddam.

Iraq's highest court on Tuesday also affirmed the death sentences handed down on Saddam's half-brother Barzan Ibrahim, intelligence chief during the Dujail killings, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court that issued the death sentences on the Dujail citizens.

The two were also hanged Saturday, Reuters reported, citing a report by Arabic satellite television channel Arabiya.

It is still unclear how Saddam's execution will be taken in Iraq by his supporters or his detractors, but there is widespread concern it will spark an escalation in the sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites.

The day the high court rejected Saddam's appeal more than 50 Iraqis were killed in Baghdad bombings and other violence, police also discovered 49 bodies of victims in what appeared to be reprisal killings and at least seven U.S. soldiers were killed in attacks.

It is also unclear if witnesses to other acts by the former Iraqi president while in power, such as the deaths of an estimated 180,000 Kurds in northern Iraq two decades ago, will ever get to tell their stories in court.

The trial in which Saddam was charged with genocide and other crimes for the killing of the Kurds had been set to resume Jan. 8, but with the main defendant dead it is unknown what the court will now do.