KURDISH villagers relived the horror of a chemical weapons attack on their hamlet of Balisan yesterday as survivors testified at the genocide trial of Saddam Hussein, the ousted Iraqi dictator.

In their hillside cement home, Haiysha Hussein Hassan, 74, and her grandson Mukhlis, 27, watched on TV as their neighbours told a Baghdad court of the Iraqi army assault on Balisan and the adjoining community of Sheikh Wasan 19 years ago that cost Mrs Hassan her husband and three sons.

Mrs Hassan, stooped and gnarled, broke into tears watching the hearing and recalled the day, April 16, 1987, that marked Saddam’s first use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. The assault would prove to be a preview of the next year’s bloody Anfal campaign, which prosecutors say left 180,000 victims dead.

“Why must the Government try him? They should kill him at once,” Mrs Hasssan cried. “I can’t stay calm I keep thinking of my sons.”

In the valley below her house 25 victims of the attack lie buried.

Hundreds of miles away, Ali Mustafa Hama, her fellow villager, recalled for the Baghdad court the spring evening when between eight and twelve jets flew over Balisan. They started firing on the village and its neighbour Sheikh Wasan.

The explosions were not very loud, Mr Hama told the judge. “There was green smoke rising from the bomb, as if there was a rotten apple or garlic smell. Lots of citizens immediately had red eyes and began to vomit. Afterwards it was dark,” he said.

The second witness, Najib Khudair Ahmad, confronted Saddam and his six co-defendants in a charged moment that gave voice to years of suffering by the Kurds under the collapsed regime.

“If we were Iraqis, why did you bomb us?” asked Mrs Ahmad, a 41-year-old mother, whose face and eyes bore scars from the gas attack. “Even now my throat has problems. Skin from all delicate parts of my body has peeled off. After the attacks I had a baby whose skin also peeled off and is sick. I also had miscarriages,” she said.

The defence argued that the regime’s 1987-88 campaign was the correct and legal response to an insurrection by Kurdish rebel groups during the country’s 1980-88 war with Iran.

Sabir al-Douri, Saddam’s former director of military intelligence, said that Iranians and Kurds were fighting hand in hand against the Iraqi military.Mr Hama admitted that Kurdish guerrilla fighters — peshmerga — had visited his village before the bombing.

Along with Saddam, his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid — the notorious Chemical Ali — is charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The remaining defendants — senior political and military figures — have been indicted only on the last two charges.

Back in Balisan, the court session gave Mrs Hassan little solace. Her frail body trembled and she kept sobbing. She recounted how she abandoned her husband in the village when the warplanes began firing. He was shot in the leg and she kept running.

“The chemical weapons made a dust cloud. It was so big that it blotted out the sun. Most of us ran towards the hill and hid in a cave,” she said. “I didn’t take care of anyone. I just tried to save myself.”

Her husband was rescued from the village but the gas attack had left him and her three sons blind. Iraqi security services took them away to a hospital for treatment and they were never seen again.

Even Mrs Hassan has troubles with her eyes. “Until now I don’t see well.” She brandished a pack of pills in aluminium foil and said that 150 people from Balisan had had problems with their eyesight since the attack.

Her grandson recalled his last memories of his own father taking him to the nearby Sheikh Mahmoud village for safety before the attack. “He said that he had to go home to water the onions and then he’d come back,” Mukhlis said. His grandmother added: “We were used to the Iraqi Army bombing us, but they had never used chemical weapons.”

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