Anfal targeted guerrillas and troops, Saddam trial told

Defendants in the new trial of Saddam Hussein today insisted that the military was attacking only Iranian troops and Kurdish rebels when it launched the Anfal campaign in the 1980s in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed.

Their comments came on the second day of the Baghdad trial, in which Saddam is charged with genocide over the 1987-1988 Operation Anfal, in which troops swept across parts of northern Iraq, destroying villages.