On the recordMarch 14, 1996
8 years ago this week, in the closing weeks of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein sent Iraqi forces to crush a rebellion among the Kurds of northern Iraq. In the assault, centered on the city of Halabja, Saddam's forces rained poison gas down upon the city, and over 5,000 Kurds, many of them civilians, lost their lives in horrifying fashion. As research since the end of the Iran-Iraq war has shown, Halabja was only the most brutal chapter in Saddam's genocidal campaign against the Kurds of northern Iraq. From the mid-1980's through the end of the war, Iraq forced hundreds of thousands of Kurdish citizens into detention camps, kidnapped tens of thousands of others, most of whom are presumed dead, and attacked Kurdish towns and villages, often with deadly poison gas. Some 150,000 Kurds lost their lives in this infamous Anfal campaign--which can only be described as a campaign of genocide by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds of Iraq.
Source
govinfo.gov
