A court in The Hague in the Netherlands has ruled that the killing of thousands of Kurds in Iraq in the 1980s was an act of genocide.
The ruling came in the case of Dutch trader Frans van Anraat, who was sentenced to 15 years in jail for selling chemicals to the former Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein's regime.
Mr van Anraat was found guilty of complicity in war crimes over the 1988 chemical attack that killed more than 5,000 people but he was acquitted of genocide charges.
It is the first trial to deal with war crimes against Kurds in Iraq and Iran.
Separately, ten Iraqi soldiers have been killed and 20 wounded in an attack on a checkpoint north of Baghdad.
Police said the attack at Adhaim, which lies between the capital and Kirkuk, was the bloodiest since the parliamentary elections in Iraq last week.
The attackers fired on the checkpoint with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades.
The area near Adhaim has been attacked before, including assaults on Iraqi army and police posts.
