By Michael Georgy

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Cursing Saddam Hussein, a Kurdish woman told the former Iraqi leader's genocide trial on Wednesday she was horribly burned after aircraft bombed her mountain village with chemical weapons.

"I lost my sight. My children lost their sight ... My house was razed to the ground. May God blind them all," said Adiba Owla Bayez, pointing at the former Iraqi president and his six co-defendants on the third day of the trial.

Describing a spring evening in 1987, the 45-year-old mother of five said aircraft dropped bombs behind her house and she had immediately noticed a difference from previous attacks.

"We smelt a peculiar smell. It was rotten apple ... My daughter Nargis said she had pain in the stomach and in her eyes. She was vomiting. All my children were vomiting. I too felt like that and started vomiting," Bayez said.

The testimony was similar to the recollections of other witnesses to the events of April 16, 1987, nearly a year before the formal launch of the Anfal -- Spoils of War -- campaign in the Balisan valley, north of Sulaimaniya.

Bayez, the wife of the trial's first witness, Ali Mustafa Hama, said she suffered two miscarriages and had an infant die at the age of three months following the attack.

Saddam and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, are charged with genocide over the seven-month operation. Majid earned his nickname "Chemical Ali" after poison gas attacks in the north.

...Bayez said that once the bombardment ceased, a helicopter hunted the villagers as they fled into the mountains. Those that escaped took refuge in caves.

"We were wounded, sick, but still fled. By now I was vomiting blood. My children were blind. My skin on the body had peeled off," she told the court, speaking Kurdish and wearing traditional black dress.

Saddam's soldiers soon rounded them up, shipping them to Arbil, where they were held with no medical treatment until being moved again, she said.

"After nine days guards said 'all the wounded come to the courtyard of the detention center'. I was screaming as my leg was burned. I was unable to walk. My skin was peeled off, my children ... their skin was peeled," she said.

After photographing the captured Kurds, the men were separated and led away and the women and children were transported back to the countryside, where they were dumped.

Al-Reuters