The 36th anniversary of the chemical bombing of the city of Halabja

ARK News… Today, March 16, 2024, marks the 36th anniversary of the bombing of the martyr city of Halabja, which killed “5,000” civilians and injured thousands more.

As part of the Anfal campaign in Kurdistan, on March 16, 1988, the defunct Iraqi Baath regime carried out a chemical attack on the Kurds in Halabja.

A UN investigation concluded that mustard gas was used in the attack along with other unidentified nerve irritants.

The bombing of the city of Halabja with chemical weapons is one of the largest attacks targeting a civilian-populated area, resulting in the death of 5,000 people and the injury of 7,000 to 10,000 others, most of whom were civilians.

Preliminary results from surveys of the disaster area showed an increase in the incidence of cancer and birth defects in the years after the attack until today.

After the fall of the Baath regime in Iraq, Ali Hassan al-Majid, a high-ranking Iraqi official and leader of the Anfal campaign, was convicted of ordering the attack and later executed in 2010.

Every year, on March 16, the Kurdish people in the Kurdistan Region stand for five minutes of silence in memory of the victims of the Halabja massacre.

133