SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Kurdistan Region on Tuesday commemorated Saddam Hussein’s poison gas attack on Halabja which killed thousands of people, mostly women and children.
On March 16, 1988, the Baath regime’s forces unleashed a cocktail of deadly gases on Halabja. Iraqi aircrafts attacked the city with chemical weapons killing some 5,000 people and injuring thousands more.
The genocide was one of many horrific crimes committed by the Baath regime under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship against the Kurdistan Region’s people.
The Halabja victims were among some 180,000 people killed during the regime’s “Anfal campaign” against the Kurds.
The attack still haunts Halabja as its residents, now estimated at around 200,000, still fight for justice, care for the ill and hunt for missing relatives.
Governor of Halabja Azad Tofiq told Esta Media Network that people in the province would gather at the graveyard of “martyrs” of the chemical attack to commemorate the attack.
Marking 33 years since the massacre, tearful relatives on Tuesday carried portraits of the victims in a solemn ceremony of remembrance.
President of Halabja chemical victims’ group Luqman Abdulqadir said there were still 486 people who are seriously ill from the chemical attack.
“They have respiratory difficulties and eyesight problems,” Abdulqadir told AFP, who himself lost six family members in the massacre.
“Neither the federal authorities nor the Iraqi Kurdish authorities have set up a care programme to help them,” he said.
Halabja families are also still trying to find children that went missing amid the chaos of the attack, with many having been sheltered and treated in Iran, just 10 kilometers away.
Head of child protection commission Ayad Aras said 142 children were still mission.
Unable to convict Saddam, the residents of Halabja are now trying to force his accomplices out of the woodwork.
On March 13, 2018, a total of 5,500 relatives of victims sued 25 European companies and individuals, including Iraqis, who they say aided Saddam’s regime in developing its chemical weapons stockpile.
