Witnesses Describe 1980s Attacks in Kurdistan

On that spring evening, the Kurdish villagers had just returned from farming their fields when they heard the roar of airplanes. They knew they had little time to reach the bunkers. In one house, Adiba Awla Baiz grabbed her children and ran for cover.

After the bombing stopped, she and others vomited blood.

“Then I realized it was chemical weapons because we had frequently been attacked by aircrafts, but not like this,” Baiz testified Wednesday in the second trial of Saddam Hussein. The former Iraqi leader and six codefendants face charges of genocide in the killing of tens of thousands of Kurds in a military offensive in Kurdistan known as the Anfal campaign.

Three women and one man testified that Iraqi warplanes dropped chemical weapons on northern Kurdish villages in 1987 and ‘88, recounting their horror and hopelessness as friends and relatives became sick and died around them.

“We lost everything,” Baiz said after testifying that her Kurdish village had been bombed with chemical weapons in the spring of 1987. Her children were blinded for days, and several people died in the shelter where they had sought refuge, she said.

“May God blind them all, like they blinded us,” she said in Kurdish, referring to the defendants.

Echoing testimony Tuesday by other survivors, the four witnesses described the fury of the attacks, their sounds and smells. One recalled the odor as similar to rotten apples; another likened it to cinnamon.

On April 16, 1987, Baiz and her family were about to eat dinner when they heard the planes. Baiz, her husband, their five children and the husband’s uncle were already in the shelter when the bombing started, she said.

“My daughter Nergis told me that she had pains in the eyes and the stomach,” Baiz said. “When I came closer to her, she vomited on my chest.... I washed her face and carried her to the house.”

Hearing the sound of approaching helicopters, she and others fled to the mountains, she said. While aircraft attacked nearby roads, Baiz and her children hid in a cave.

The attack left her skin burned and peeling. Several villagers, including her husband’s uncle, died in the attack, its aftermath or in detention, she said. After villagers had been taken to a hospital, some were transferred to a prison.

“An officer came,” she said. “Three stars on his shoulder. He was looking at us and he was crying for us.... He took pity on us.”

Eventually, they were told to go back to their village.

Baiz said that nearly two decades later, she and her children remained scarred by the attack. She said her children suffered shortness of breath, her husband could not be exposed to the sun, and she had had three miscarriages. Baiz showed medical records to support her claims.

“I want compensation, and I ask the court to take the necessary measures to treat the sick people,” Baiz said.

Badrya Said Kheder, 56, testified about losing nine family members in the Anfal campaign.

Kheder said villagers were detained for eight days after the attack. “Then the men were taken and disappeared,” she said. “They are lost. They are ‘Anfalized.’ ”

Among the family members she lost were her husband, brothers and uncle.

Kheder, who was pregnant during her detention, said she still suffered physically as a result of the attack. During her testimony, her voice faltered.

“I have a lot to say but I can’t continue,” said Kheder, who said she had been in the hospital a few days ago.

“I ask the government to compensate me, and I ask the court to treat Saddam as he treated us,” she said. “We were poor people. I don’t know why they were bombing us. There was no reason.”

Two other witnesses, Bahiya Mustafa Mamood, 56, and Mosa Abdullah Mosa, 50, also testified.

Mosa said that at the time of the attacks he was a member of the Kurdish militia, which was seeking autonomy for the Kurds of northern Iraq. Afterward, he found the bodies of his brother and nephew, the two holding each other in death, he said.

“A person can’t describe this feeling,” he said. “Just the eyes and the heart saw that situation.”

The trial was adjourned until Sept. 11.

Violence continued to rage in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq.

On Wednesday, several Iraqis were killed or found dead. Most were killed in Baghdad.

Among the dead were a 17-year-old boy shot while selling ice, a councilman killed by drive-by gunmen as he visited constituents, and eight Shiite watermelon farmers from Najaf whose bullet-riddled bodies were found south of the city, police said.

Eight people were assassinated in various attacks in Baqubah. In Fallouja, a roadside bomb killed two people.

Times staff writers Saif Rasheed, Raheem Salman and Suhail Ahmad contributed to this report.