Remembering Halabja chemical attack

on March 16, 2021 | 10:25:14

31 years ago Saddam Hussein committed the world’s worst chemical weapons attack on a civilian population in Kurdish northern Iraq.

On March 16, 1988, government forces attacked the town near the Iranian border after it was taken over by Kurdish rebels towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war.

An estimated 5,000 people were killed when Iraqi Air Force jets dropped poison gas on the town. Many others died later of cancer and related illnesses.

The Halabja attack has been recognized as a distinct event of the Anfal Genocide conducted against the Kurdish people by the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein.

The Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as an act of genocide on March 1, 2010, a decision welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. The attack was also condemned as a crime against humanity by the Parliament of Canada.

In 2010, high-ranking Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid was found guilty of ordering the attack, sentenced to death, and executed.

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