Iraq's Kurds expressed satisfaction yesterday at the death of Saddam Hussein, but their joy was tempered with disappointment that their greatest tormentor would never face justice for what he had done to them.

Saddam had been standing trial in a second case on charges of genocide against the Kurds during the Anfal campaign in the late 1980s, during which more than 4,000 villages were destroyed and more than 100,000 people killed in a series of military sweeps in the Kurdistan region that included the regular use of chemical weapons.

The former dictator was also due to face separate charges over the gas attack on Halabja in March 1988 that killed 5,000 Kurds. Sources at the special tribunal trying Saddam and six members of his former regime in the Anfal trial said yesterday that proceedings would resume on January 8. The remaining defendants are Ali Hassan Majid, known as Chemical Ali, a cousin of Saddam, described by Kurds as the evil face of the Anfal campaign; Sultan Hashim Ahmad Jabburi Tai, former defence minister; Sabir Abdul Aziz Douri, director of military intelligence; Hussein Rashid Mohammed, a senior military officer; Taher Tawfiq Ani, former governor of Nineveh province; and Farhan Mutlaq Jubouri, head of military intelligence in northern Iraq.

Under Iraqi law, all outstanding charges against an executed person must be dropped. Without the interest that would be caused by the presence of the chief defendant, Kurds fear that their past suffering will attract less attention from fellow Iraqis and the international community.

A spokesman for the Kurdish president, Massoud Barzani, said: "We hope that Saddam's execution will lead to a new chapter among the Iraqi people, and to ending innocent people's sufferings." But he added: "We also wish that the execution not be used as an excuse to ignore the documentation of the enormous crimes committed against the Kurds."

"How can I be sad that the tyrant is gone? It is like a dream come true for the survivors in my family," said Herro Mahmoud, a primary school teacher in Sulaymaniyah who lost her father and uncle to the Anfal (which means spoils of war). "But I think they should have waited until the other cases had been heard, and all the scale of the other atrocities would be known."

Other Kurds said they felt cheated. "Saddam was hanged for the murder of 148 people in Dujail. But why won't he face the court for killing hundreds of thousands of Kurds? Do our dead and our traumatised people not deserve to be honoured?" said Bijar Ahmed, an English student at the university of Koi Sanjaq.

Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish MP in Baghdad who survived several assassination attempts by the former regime, criticised the Iraqi government's apparent rush to carry out the death sentence before the end of the Anfal trial.

"It was very important to keep him alive so that we could know the full details of what happened during all the atrocities that were committed," he said. "We need to know how and why he did what he did and who helped him, by providing political and material support to his regime."

Saddam had taken many secrets to his grave, he said, including vital knowledge about "the foreign companies and countries that supplied the parts and expertise to make chemical weapons."

· Additional reporting by Alan Attoof in Sulaymaniya