Majid, whom the Kurds have nicknamed "Chemical Ali," is blamed by them for ordering the 1988 gas attack on Halabja that killed about 5,000 villagers.

His death "closes one of the darkest chapters of recent Kurdish history. Along with his cousin Saddam Hussein, Chemical Ali symbolized the most brutal terror campaign of the Baathist regime against the Iraqi people," said Barham Salih, who acts as prime minister for areas under control of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), in a statement.

But Salih acknowledged he would have "preferred to see him respond to his crimes before an international criminal court."

"Majid was charged by Saddam with the final solution to the Kurdish problem and orchestrated the genocide against the Kurdish people from February to August 1988," he said.

Earlier Monday, US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Majid was killed in a coalition raid on the southern city of Basra on Saturday.

But at the US Central Command's forward planning base in Qatar, Brigadier General Vincent Brooks stressed there was no hard evidence yet Majid was dead.

Salih added that Halabja was only the most widely known chemical attack.

There were "up to 200 chemical attacks against the Kurdish people, 182,000 people were killed during Anfal and more than 4,500 villages razsed."

Anfal was the name given to the ruthless suppression commanded by Iraq's ruling Baath party against the Kurds between February and September 1988.

For most of that period, the Baath party's northern bureau was headed by Majid.

SPACE.WIRE