"May God blind them all," cried 45-year-old Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at Saddam and six co-defendants who are accused of masterminding the brutal 1987-1988 Anfal campaign against Iraq's Kurdish minority.

The accused appeared before a panel of judges at the Iraqi High Tribunal in Baghdad, where prosecutors began to call more witnesses to testify to the savagery of the Iraqi military sweep through their villages.

The former president is accused of ordering his forces to conduct a campaign to exterminate up to 182,000 Kurdish civilians and raze around 3,000 villages in Iraq's northern hills and deserts.

Bayez, the wife of the first Kurdish witness to testify on Tuesday, told the court one of her daughters had died within three months of the chemical attack on her village, and that she has since had two miscarriages.

Her testimony about the attack on the village of Belisand, describing how she and her family were temporarily blinded by gas during an air raid by Iraqi jets on April 16, 1987, closely mirrored her husband's account.

"I was screaming because I did not want to lose my children. I could not see them and they were also blind. So I was screaming," she told the court.

"It was a judgment day," she added.

She recounted how the villagers, many of them blinded, stumbled towards higher ground to seek shelter, pursued by fire from military helicopters. They were tracked down by Iraqi troops and taken to a detention centre, she said.

"I went for four days without eyesight. My children could not see. I was just screaming. On the fifth day I slightly opened my eyes. And it was a terrible scene. My children and my skin had turned black," she said.

After several days, 29 men from the village were separated from their families and taken away, Bayez said, alleging that they had been "Anfalized", the term used today in Kurdistan for those who disappeared.

The remaining survivors were cast loose. "Army trucks came. We were loaded on them and dumped in open ground near the village of Khalifan," Bayez said.

Another witness from Belisand, Badriya Said Khidr, said she had lost nine members of her family in the attack -- including her husband, son, father and mother -- while she still suffers the after-effects.

"I can't speak. I am breathless," she wheezed. "I want the court to treat Saddam as he treated us."

A third woman, Bahiya Mustafa Mahmoud, also described the gas attack, and told the court that she had lost her husband during Anfal.

The accused insist that their campaign was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation aimed at Iranian infiltrators and separatist guerrillas.

Anfal -- named after an Arabic term in the Koran meaning "spoils" -- was an operation directed against Kurds living in northern Iraq in the closing stages of Saddam's long war against neighbouring Iran.

Two of Saddam's co-defendants argued Tuesday that the campaign was justified in the context of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

"Iranians and Kurds were fighting hand in hand against the Iraqi military," said Saber al-Duri, Saddam's former director of military intelligence.

Court officials expect the Anfal trial to last for around four months. Along with Saddam, six former officials including his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid -- the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- are facing charges.

Saddam and Chemical Ali have been accused of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. They refused to enter pleas, and the court ordered that pleas of innocent be recorded for them.

The remaining five defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Saddam, who was overthrown in 2003 by a US-led invasion, has already been tried for allegedly ordering the deaths of 148 Shiite villagers, and could face the death penalty. The verdict in that case is due on October 16.