The Halabja chemical attack

تاريخ تاريخ النشر 29/11/2017
The Halabja chemical attack also known as the Halabja Massacre or Bloody Friday in Iraqi history. This attract was a massacre against the Kurdish people that took place on March 16, 1988. During the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War in the Kurdish city of Halabja in Southern Kurdistan.
The attack was part of the Al-Anfal Campaign in northern Iraq, as well as part of the Iraqi attempt to repel the Iranian Operation Zafar 7. It took place 48 hours after the fall of the town to the Iranian army.
The attack killed between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injured 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians. Preliminary results from surveys of the affected region showed an increased rate of cancer incidence and birth defects in the years after the attack.
The incident, which has been officially defined by Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal as a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people in Iraq. was and still remains the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history.
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.
Northern Iraq was an area of general unrest during the early stage of the Iran–Iraq War, with the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan militias joining forces, with Iranian support, in 1982 and 1983, respectively.
The Kurdish rebellion was largely put down by mid-1980s. From 1985, however, the Iraqi Ba'athist regime under Saddam Hussein decided to eradicate pockets of Kurdish resistance 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).
The five-hour attack began in the evening of March 16, 1988, following a series of indiscriminate conventional (rocket and napalm) attacks citation needed.
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 citation needed.
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.