Survivors tell Saddam trial of chemical attack

SURVIVORS yesterday told Saddam Hussein’s trial how poisonous clouds of gas killed children and blinded residents during a military offensive against Kurds in 1987.

Saddam’s co-defendants insisted that the Anfal campaign, in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed, was directed only at Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian troops in northern Iraq during the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Saddam faces charges of genocide in the trial. Six co-defendants are in the dock with him over the 1987-1988 Anfal campaign, in which troops swept across parts of northern Iraq, destroying villages.