Fidel Castro’s ashes were interred in a private ceremony on Sunday morning, ending nine days of mourning for the man who ruled Cuba for nearly half a century.

A military caravan bearing his remains in a flag-draped cedar coffin left the Plaza of the Revolution in the eastern city of Santiago at 6.39am. Thousands of people lined the two-mile route to Santa Ifigenia cemetery, waving Cuban flags and shouting “Long live Fidel!”

The Cuban military fired a 21-gun salute and crowds at the entrance to the cemetery sang the national anthem as the ashes entered about 40 minutes later.

The ceremony lasted more than an hour and took place out of the public eye, after Cuban officials made a last-minute cancellation of plans to broadcast the events live on national and international television. International media were also barred from the ceremony.

Afterward, members of the public were allowed briefly inside the cemetery to see the tomb, a simple round stone about 15ft high with a plaque bearing his name. The tomb stood to the side of a memorial to the rebel soldiers killed in an attack that Castro led on Santiago’s Moncada barracks on 26 July 1953, and in front of the mausoleum of the Cuban national hero José Martí.

An honor guard of a dozen uniformed soldiers stood in front of Castro’s tomb.

Before the ceremony ended, martial music could be heard outside the cemetery, where Ines de la Rosa was among the mourners gathered. She said she would have liked to watch the ceremony on television, but “we understand how they as a family also need a bit of privacy”.

A view from a distance of the burial ceremony at the Santa Ifigenia cemetery in Santiago de Cuba. Photograph: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images

Another mourner, Elena Vinales, said she wasn’t surprised that the images of the ceremony were not broadcast. “It seems to be a family moment,” she said.

The decision to hold a private ceremony came the morning after Castro’s brother, President Raúl Castro, announced that Cuba would prohibit the naming of streets and monuments after the former leader, and bar the construction of statues.

“The leader of the revolution rejected any manifestation of a cult of personality,” Raúl Castro told a huge crowd gathered in the eastern city of Santiago, “and was consistent in that through the last hours of his life, insisting that, once dead, his name and likeness would never be used on institutions, streets, parks or other public sites, and that busts, statues or other forms of tribute would never be erected.”

Castro said Cuba’s national assembly would vote in its next session on the law fulfilling the wishes of his brother, who died last month at 90. The legislature generally holds a meeting in December and under Cuba’s single-party system, unanimously or nearly unanimously approves every government proposal.

Fidel Castro, who stepped down in 2006 after falling ill, kept his name off public sites during his near half-century in power. In contrast, the images of his fellow revolutionary fighters Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto “Che” Guevara became common across Cuba in the decades after their deaths.

Mourning for Castro has been fervent and intense across the country, particularly in rural eastern Cuba, where huge crowds have been shouting Castro’s name and lining the roads to salute the funeral procession carrying his ashes.

“All of us would like to put Fidel’s name on everything but in the end, Fidel is all of Cuba,” said Juan Antonio Gonzalez, a 70-year-old retired economist.

“It was a decision of Fidel’s, not Raúl’s, and I think he has to be respected.”