"Today I was born again after I witnessed the defendant Chemical Ali in the cage, terrified as he heard the sentence," said Fatima Rasul, 45, who lost her father and 20 relatives in the brutal 1988 campaign known as Anfal.

Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as Chemical Ali for orchestrating the gassing of the Kurds, was sentenced to hang for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, along with former defence minister Sultan Hashim al-Tai and former army commander Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti.

"I demand that Ali be transported to Halabja or any Kurdish town to be hanged," Rasul said, referring to the village where Majid's forces killed 5,000 Kurds in 1988 in what is believed to have been the worst gas attack ever against civilians.

In all, an estimated 182,000 people were killed by Iraqi forces in the Anfal campaign, where whole villages were wiped out in waves of bombing raids, gas attacks and mass deportations.

"I was very happy when I saw Ali Hassan al-Majid sentenced," said Nergis Aziz, 57, who lost three brothers and her husband. Her son later died of starvation in a detention camp.

"I would have loved to dance today, but for those of us who lost our brothers and our loved ones, our sadness will not end with their execution," she told AFP in the northern Kurdish city of Arbil.

"The contrast between the methods used by these Saddam loyalists to carry out 'justice' and the legal way they have been prosecuted could not be more stark," the Kurdish regional government said in a statement.

"These men, who arbitrarily and extra-judicially kidnapped and killed, have been afforded the right to defend themselves in a court of law. Their prosecution in this way is a triumph for the rule of law."

Some raised fears that the verdicts could further divide the country, engulfed in a deadly insurgency and sectarian bloodshed more than four years after the US-led invasion that ousted Saddam.

Others felt the investigation should have gone deeper.

"I do not want Ali to be executed," said Ari Hearson, 40, a former Kurdish guerilla wounded in the fighting.

"He should be kept in solitary confinement to write his memories about the Anfal crimes and how he committed them, crimes against children and unarmed citizens."

Mahmud Othman, a Kurdish MP and physician who treated victims of the first Anfal operation in the countryside north of the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, said the trial was incomplete.

"In the whole trial nothing was mentioned about who helped Saddam make the chemical weapons, which countries and which companies helped him to use them against us," he said.

"I think that was deliberate. Those who helped Saddam make chemical weapons are responsible for what happened and so they should pay compensation to those families."

Others looked forward to future investigations that would reveal the assistance some of their fellow Kurds provided to the regime.

"I want all those who have the blood of the victims of Anfal on their hands and who evaded their responsibility to be judged," said Rizkar Sherif, 18, who was born in a detention camp near the end of the campaign.

"Those who were sentenced today are the main perpetrators, but we also know that there were others from among us, and we want those who helped the regime in the Anfal campaign to be punished as well," he told AFP in Arbil.

Othman voiced fear the verdict could further divide the country in the same way the execution of Saddam in December brought rejoicing from his victims and anger from many of the country's Sunnis.

"I'm afraid something similar will happen on a smaller scale," Othman said. "These steps do not help the process of national reconciliation, even though they are just and should be done."

Ayad al-Samarrai, a Sunni MP, said he supported the decision to hang Chemical Ali but felt it was unfair to punish former army officers for following orders.

"For Ali Hassan al-Majid it is just, but I don't think the army officers should have been punished. Every army officer in Iraq has to obey orders," Samarrai said.