Date:20/09/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/09/20/stories/2006092003911600.htm

International

Witness testifies on Anfal attack

BAGHDAD: The genocide trial of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein resumed on Tuesday with further harrowing witness testimony about the military campaign that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds in the 1980s.

``The fighting started in the village of Qaram Pasha and lasted for three days,'' Rauf Faraj Abdallah, a middle-aged Kurd in traditional dress, told the court.

``Out of fear, we fled towards the mountains, as our village was bombed with chemical weapons.'' Mr. Hussein and six of his former associates are on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

They are accused of leading the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, which prosecutors say killed 182,000 Kurds after their villages were bombed, burned and razed to the ground.

The previous hearing's testimony was dominated by a former Kurdish guerilla who described a village being attacked from the air by chemical weapons. — AP, Xinhua