The ninth session of the trial showcased further testimonies from witnesses of the brutal 1987-1988 Anfal campaign launched by Saddam's forces that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds.

Saddam and six of his former associates are on trial for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

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

If found guilty they face execution by hanging.

On Tuesday, Rauf Faraj Abdallah, a middle-aged Kurd, told the court how his village was bombed by chemical weapons and he and his pregnant wife were then imprisoned by military in Mosul.

There they were separated and then he found out the next day from another prisoner that she had given birth.

"She told me that my wife gave birth in the cell, when I went in I saw my newborn baby had died," he said. The infant was later buried in a nearby mass grave.

A second witness, who had been a Kurdish guerilla fighter at the time, also described how he was badly gassed and then taken to hospitals in Iran.

"I regained consciousness after 10 days and saw my body had been burnt completely," said Iskander Mahmoud Abdel Rahman.

"The doctors were giving me injections and medication including eye drops frequently and they cut the burnt skin off with scissors."

The witness then took off his shirt and showed several 20 centimeter (eight inch) scars down his back. He added that his eyesight was still poor to this day.

A third witness then mounted the stand and described how he struggled to save his family from a gas attack by wrapping them in clothes soaked in water.

"I heard one of the villagers shout 'run for your lives, it's a chemical attack, chemical, chemical!' I noticed my wife also struggled to breath because we were both outside when the chemical attack happened," said Obeid Mahmud Mohammed.

"My wife and six children died, I would've preferred to die, it's worse to survive the death of your children," he said.

He survived however, remarried, and had four more children -- each one named after one of his previous lost children.

At one point during this testimony, chief Judge Abdallah al-Ameri had to admonish defense lawyer Badie Aref for falling asleep.

Soon afterwards the trial was adjourned until Wednesday.

The onset of the trial has been dominated by witness testimony of Saddam's campaign, which the former regime says was a counter-insurgency operation against rebellious Kurds.

Tuesday's session also witnessed an angry exchange between the prosecution and Aref, representing defendant Farhan al-Juburi, a former intelligence officer.

The court's chief prosecutor Jaafar al-Mussawi accused the outspoken Aref of being insulting and unprofessional while the lawyer retorted he would file another complaint against the prosecutor.

"The court has decided to warn the lawyer not to insult anyone in the court," said judge Ameri.

The trial turned controversial last week after friendly exchanges between the Shiite judge and Saddam, with the prosecutor and some Kurdish and Shiite groups demanding his resignation.

During an exchange last Thursday, Ameri said to Saddam: "You were not a dictator," and suggested it was those close to him who made him look like one. Saddam thanked the judge.

While Iraq's Kurds still seek justice over Anfal, Shiites are awaiting the October 16 verdict in Saddam's first trial when he was charged over the killing of 148 Shiites from the village of Dujail after an attempt on his life there in 1982.