Halabja massacre

The Halabja massacre (Kurdish: کیمیابارانی ھەڵەبجە, romanized: Kêmyabarana Helebce) took place in Iraqi Kurdistan on 16 March 1988, when thousands of Kurds were killed by a large-scale Iraqi chemical attack. A targeted attack in Halabja, it was carried out during the Anfal campaign, which was led by Iraqi military officer Ali Hassan al-Majid. Two days before the attack, the city had been captured by Iran as part of Operation Zafar 7 of the Iran–Iraq War. Following the incident, the United Nations launched an investigation and concluded that mustard gas as well as unidentified nerve agents had been used against Kurdish civilians. The BBC later reported that a mixture of mustard, tabun, sarin, and VX, was used. The United States Defense Intelligence Agency initially blamed Iran for the attack, though the majority of evidence later revealed that Iraq had used the chemical weapons to bolster an ongoing military offensive against Iran, pro-Iranian Kurdish fighters, and ordinary Halabja residents.

To date, the Halabja massacre remains the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated region in human history, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more. Preliminary results from surveys of the affected areas showed increased rates of cancer and birth defects in the years since the attack took place.

In 2010, the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal officially defined the Halabja chemical attack as a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people during the time of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. That same year, it was also formally condemned by the Parliament of Canada, which classified it as a crime against humanity. Al-Majid, who was captured during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, was put on trial and found guilty of ordering the attack; he was sentenced to death in June 2007 and executed by hanging in January 2010.