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Boston bombing: Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body is finally laid to rest

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The body of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died after a gun battle with police, has found its final resting place, ending more than a week of confusion and anger about how to deal with the remains of the suspected Boston Marathon bomber.

Police in Worcester, Mass., where the body has been in a funeral home, announced that the issue of where the body should be buried has been resolved.

“As a result of our public appeal for help, a courageous and compassionate individual came forward to provide the assistance needed to properly bury the deceased. His body is no longer in the city of Worcester and is now entombed,” police said in a statement posted on its website.

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“Most importantly the chief thanks the community that provided the burial site,” said police, who did not say where the body ended up. “There is no further information at this time.”

Tsarnaev, 26, and his brother, Dzhokhar, are accused of planting two pressure-cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon on April 15. The bombs, packed with shrapnel, exploded about 100 yards apart on Boylston Street and within about 10 seconds of each other. Three people were killed and more than 260 people were injured.

The explosions set off a massive search for suspects and led officials to lock down the metropolitan Boston area for more than a day.

Officials said the Tsarnaev brothers killed an MIT campus officer in an attempt to steal his gun and then carjacked a vehicle whose driver later escaped. During a gun battle with police in Watertown, Mass., in the early hours on the Friday after the bombings, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was shot and later run over by his fleeing brother. The official cause of death was from gunshot wounds and blunt force trauma.

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How to inter Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s remains became a dilemma almost as soon as the state released the body to the family and a funeral home on May 1. There were immediate protests, after which the body was moved Friday to a second home, the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester.

There the body remained while family and the funeral director tried to find a cemetery that would accept it. At least four cemeteries and the cities of Cambridge and Boston refused burial.

The body, which had been washed and cared for in the traditional Muslim manner, was moved overnight.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was captured on April 19 after hiding in a boat outside a house in Watertown, has been charged with using a weapon of mass destruction. If convicted, he could receive the death penalty. He is being held in a prison hospital about 40 miles from Boston.

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