Baghdad – Iraqi Kurds have marked the 24th anniversary of the chemical attack on the northern Iraqi city of Halabja by the forces of former dictator Saddam Hussein.

More than 5,000 people, mostly Kurds, were killed after Iraqi planes under the command of Saddam Hussain and by the help of western governments, dropped chemical bombs on Halabja and its suburbs on March 16, 1988 as part of a genocidal campaign against the Kurds and other ethnic groups in Northern Iraq, known as al-Anfal Operation which killed tens of thousands.

Another 7,000 were injured, crippled, or suffered long-term health problems in Halabja poison gas attack.

Although Halabja massacre was the most heinous part of the al-Anfal Operation, it was not end of it, the Bathist Iraqi army also systematically destroyed villages, incarcerated in concentration camps, starved, and executed thousands of people between 1986 and 1989 in an attempt to quash an uprising in the north.

Arab countries and the West turned a blind-eye to the atrocities committed by the Saddam regime against a civilian population.