Halabja

The Halabja massacre (Kurdish: Kêmyabarana Helebce کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە), also known as the Halabja chemical attack, was a massacre of Kurdish people that took place on 16 March 1988, during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict in the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War in Halabja, Kurdistan, Iraq. The attack was part of the Al-Anfal Campaign in Kurdistan, as well as part of the Iraqi Army’s attempt to repel the Iranian Operation Zafar 7. It took place 48 hours after the capture of the town by the Iranian Army. A United Nations (UN) medical investigation concluded that mustard gas was used in the attack, along with unidentified nerve agents.

The incident was the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians. Preliminary results from surveys of the affected region showed an increased rate of cancer and birth defects in the years afterward.

Northern Iraq was an area of general unrest during the early stage of the Iran–Iraq War, with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) militias joining forces, with Iranian support, in 1982 and 1983, respectively. From 1985, the Iraqi Ba’athist government under Saddam Hussein decided to eradicate pockets of Kurdish insurgents in the north and strike down the peshmerga rebels by all means possible, including large-scale punishment of civilians and the use of chemical weapons. The Halabja event was also part of Iraqi efforts to counter-attack Kurdish and Iranian forces in the final stages of Operation Zafar 7.

Chemical attack
The five-hour attack began in the evening of 16 March 1988, following a series of indiscriminate conventional (rocket and napalm) attacks. Iraqi Mig and Mirage aircraft began dropping chemical bombs on Halabja’s residential areas, far from the besieged Iraqi army base on the outskirts of the town. According to regional Kurdish rebel commanders, Iraqi aircraft, coordinated by helicopters, conducted up to 14 bombings in sorties of seven to eight planes each. Eyewitnesses told of clouds of white, black and then yellow smoke billowing upward and rising as a column about 150 feet (50 m) in the air.