(Adds statement from Saddam's family)

BAGHDAD, Dec 30 (Reuters) - The body of Saddam Hussein was taken to his home town of Tikrit after his execution on Saturday and his family said the executed former Iraqi leader would be buried in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi.

"After the family received the will of the martyred president from lawyers who last met him where he asked to be buried either in Awja or Ramadi ... it was decided to bury him in the city of Ramadi," a family statement received by Reuters said.

The statement did not say when he would be buried. It is Muslim practice to bury the dead within the day.

Burying Saddam in Ramadi, 110 km (70 miles) west of Baghdad, instead of Awja close to where he was born, was due to "private family reasons and the prevailing security situation" in Iraq, the statement added.

Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, were buried in the family shrine at Awja after U.S. troops killed them in mid-2003. Saddam himself was captured nearby at the end of that year. Defence lawyer Bushra al-Khalil said Saddam's body was flown in a U.S. military aircraft to Tikrit. A senior government source told Reuters the transfer had been made by road. A U.S. military spokesman declined comment. Yahya al-Atawi, a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in Tikrit, told Reuters by telephone from the city 180 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad that the head of Saddam's Albu Nasir tribe, Ali al-Nida, had received the body.

Saddam's daughter, Raghd, in exile in Jordan, had earlier asked for her father's body to be flown to Yemen for a temporary burial there until it can be transferred back to Iraq for a proper family ceremony.

An adviser to Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had earlier said the government wanted Saddam, 69, to be buried in a secret location in Iraq to prevent the site becoming a place of pilgrimage for rebels.

U.S. troops are on alert for trouble from insurgents among Saddam's Sunni minority. (Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Dubai and Mariam Karouny)

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