Trial Resumes

Saddam Hussein's trial resumed yesterday.

The court heard from two US residents who described how they survived shooting.

Taimor Abdallah Rokhzai described how, nearly twenty years ago, he watched as his mother and sisters were shot to death.

Quote:

"There was a trench. We were lined up. A soldier shot directly at us. I was hit on my shoulder."

Rokhzai now lives in Washington, said that during the shooting:

"I begged the soldier 'We are women and children. Why are you shooting us?'

I saw bullets hitting a woman's head and her brain coming out. I saw a pregnant woman shot and killed. It was horrible.

The shooting suddenly stopped. It was quiet. I was waiting to die. My whole body was covered with blood. The soldiers then went away. They were talking among themselves. I wanted to go to out from the trench. But a little girl asked me where I was going. I don't know her name but she was alive."

Rokhzai said he passed many trenches filled with bodies.

He kept on walking and that night he saw a tent with a light, where he was offered shelter. He moved from village to village until 1991, when the Kurdish autonomous zone was established under the protection of US and British forces.

Yunis Haji, a former Kurdish guerrilla fighter who now lives in Virginia, described a separate incident involving trenches full of dead people.

"Handcuffed and blindfolded, we (Kurdish detainees) were loaded into vehicles and taken to a remote area and dragged out.

I was pushed into a trench and was told to sit there. Suddenly, I was hit in the back. I fell unconscious, and when I woke up again, I pulled myself out of the trench and started running."

Chief judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa gave the defence team a further two days to submit a list of witnesses.

"You already had 20 days. I will give you two more days. No more and no less."

The trial continues today.