BAGHDAD, Iraq — The U.S. military announced Sunday the deaths of two soldiers, raising the number of Americans who have died in the Iraq war to at least 3,000, a somber milestone in the 46-month-old conflict.

One soldier was killed Saturday in a roadside bombing in the capital, the military said. The soldier's name and unit were not given.

The Department of Defense said on its Web site that another soldier died Thursday and identified him as Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 4th Airborne Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division.

On the final day of an exceedingly bloody year, Saddam Hussein was also buried in the town where he was born.

The day after Saddam was hanged in Baghdad, his body was transferred by American helicopter to the U.S. military base at Tikrit, 80 miles north of the capital, officials in Tikrit said.

He was interred in a compound he built in the village of Ouja, a few miles south of Tikrit, where he was born 69 years and eight months before.

Tikrit, the capital of Salahuddin province on the Tigris River, was a major power base for Saddam, who ruled Iraq through intimidation and fear for nearly a quarter century.

Hundreds of clan members and supporters visited Saddam's burial place, which was likely to become a shrine to the fallen leader. Dozens of relatives and other mourners, some of them crying and moaning, attended Saddam's funeral shortly before dawn.

"I condemn the way he was executed and I consider it a crime," said 45-year-old Salam Hassan al-Nasseri, one of Saddam's clansmen, who attended the interment.

Mohammed Natiq, a 24-year-old college student, said "the path of Arab nationalism must inevitably be paved with blood."

"God has decided that Saddam Hussein should have such an end, but his march and the course which he followed will not end," Natiq said.

Saddam's burial place is about two miles from the graves of his sons, Odai and Qusai, in the main town cemetery. Both sons and a grandson were killed in a gunbattle with the American forces in Mosul in July 2003.

"We received the body of Saddam Hussein without any complications. There was cooperation by the prime minister and his office's director," clan chief Sheik al-Nidaa told state-run Al-Iraqiya television. "We opened the coffin of Saddam. He was cleaned and wrapped according to Islamic teachings. We didn't see any unnatural signs on his body."