Military jets roared overhead as crowds of Turkmen mourners bid their last farewell to autocratic leader Saparmurat Niyazov who was buried today in a ceremony reminiscent of the grand funerals of the Soviet era.
Niyazov, who had ruled the strategic Central Asian nation since 1985 when it was still a Soviet republic, died at the age of 66 on Thursday, plunging into political uncertainty a country with vast natural gas reserves key to Russia and the West.
From early morning tens of thousands of mourners, some weeping silently and some holding flowers, moved slowly past the coffin placed in a marble, colonnaded hall at Niyazov's presidential palace, topped by a gilded dome.
A military orchestra played mournful music from a Soviet-era Turkmen film about unfulfilled love. Mourners queued in orderly lines past a tall gilded statue of Niyazov that rotates to face the sun -- the city's main landmark.
Armoured personnel vehicles and a black Mercedes carrying a huge portrait of Niyazov escorted the coffin to Niyazov's birth town of Kipchak west of Ashgabat as rows of soldiers stood to attention and saluted.
A former communist apparatchik, Niyazov ruled his nation with an iron fist for 21 years though a self-obsessed personality cult. He declared himself President-for-life and was referred to at home as Turkmenbashi or Head of the Turkmen.
He was buried in a family mausoleum near the biggest mosque in former Soviet Central Asia -- a huge marble building built for him by a French firm. Six fighter jets roared with a deafening sound as they flew low over the site.
Some people in Ashgabat said they feared for the future after the death of Niyazov, who crushed dissent, jailed critics and controlled every aspect of people's lives.
"I am really scared," said Olga, an ethnic Russian in her 50s, who would not give her last name. "The future of Turkmenistan is unclear after President Niyazov's death."
Some in the crowd were less pessimistic or just repeated the official line. "It was fate that he died," said Suleiman, a trader in his 30s clad in a black leather jacket. "But his politics will live on."