Halabja massacre

Overview

The Halabja massacre was a chemical attack carried out by the forces of Saddam Hussein against civilians in Halabja on March 16, 1988. Iraqi aircraft dropped chemical bombs on the town in Kurdistan, within Iraq. Approximately 5,000 people were killed, and more than 10,000 were wounded. The victims were chiefly Kurds; women and children were among those killed. The bombing became one of the most devastating attacks on civilians during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The massacre formed part of the wider Anfal campaign against the Kurds in 1987 and 1988. Iraqi forces destroyed thousands of villages and used chemical weapons against civilian communities during that campaign. Halabja was therefore neither an isolated bombing nor the only place where Iraqi forces dropped chemical weapons on civilians. Its death toll, the speed of the killings, and the lasting injuries suffered by survivors made the town a defining site of the campaign.

The consequences continued long after the aircraft left. Survivors reported persistent respiratory illness, while doctors in Halabja observed increases in lung fibrosis, infertility, birth defects, and rare cancers. Families lost parents, children, and siblings; wounded residents needed medical care for decades. Later disputes between Baghdad and Kurdistan compounded that burden. Baghdad withheld Kurdistan’s share of the Iraqi budget from 2014, and an international flight ban imposed after the 2017 independence referendum made access to outside treatment, visiting specialists, and medical supplies more difficult.

Background

Saddam Hussein’s government conducted the Anfal campaign across northern Iraq over ten months in 1987 and 1988. Its operations against Kurdish communities combined mass killing, village destruction, and chemical attacks. One account of the campaign records that Iraqi forces razed about 4,000 of northern Iraq’s 4,655 villages and that as many as 180,000 people were killed. Those figures describe the wider campaign, not the deaths at Halabja alone. They show the scale of the violence within which the attack on the town occurred.

The Iraqi government treated Kurdish resistance to its rule as a reason for violent reprisal. Halabja’s civilians were subjected to chemical bombardment in that setting. The town’s destruction cannot be explained as a single event detached from the campaign around it: Iraqi forces attacked other civilian settlements with chemical weapons, and the destruction of villages extended far beyond Halabja. Accounts from elsewhere in northern Iraq describe aircraft releasing chemicals over homes and cultivated fields, with exposed residents dying before they could reach a hospital.

The attack also took place during the Iran–Iraq War, when Iraq possessed and used chemical weapons. The circumstances of that war do not change responsibility for the bombing of Halabja’s civilians. Iraqi aircraft delivered the weapons, and Saddam Hussein’s forces carried out the assault. Later suggestions that Iran shared responsibility for the gassing of Halabja have been discredited; the attack is attributed to Iraq.

For Kurdish families, Anfal was experienced through the loss of homes and relatives as well as through its aggregate death toll. The destruction of villages uprooted communities across northern Iraq. Chemical attacks added injuries that could persist after the immediate danger had passed. Halabja brought those elements together in one town: a mass killing of civilians followed by long periods of illness, bereavement, and displacement.

The attack

On March 16, 1988, Iraqi fighter jets dropped chemical bombs on Halabja. The weapons spread gas through a town inhabited by Kurdish civilians. People exposed to it choked, and many died within seconds. Children were among those suffocated by the bombardment. Survivors recalled seeing parents and siblings die around them. One woman later described the gas she inhaled as smelling of almonds and said that respiratory infections became an almost constant part of her life afterward.

The scale of the air assault made escape difficult. An account of Iraqi chemical warfare describes more than 50 aircraft dropping roughly 200 bombs containing mustard and nerve agents on Halabja. The immediate deaths were accompanied by injuries among thousands who survived exposure. Estimates place the death toll at approximately 5,000 civilians rather than at a precisely established count; a survivor’s later account places the number wounded above 10,000.

People sought shelter wherever they could. One survivor credited caves in Kurdistan’s mountains with keeping him alive. Others escaped the immediate effects of the bombs but lost family members who had remained in the town or could not get away from the gas. Survival did not necessarily mean recovery: inhalation injuries and other effects followed many residents for years. The same chemical exposure that killed people quickly left others requiring repeated or continuous treatment.

The attack devastated entire households. One man who survived as a child later recounted that his father lost more than twenty relatives. Another survivor was raised by an uncle after chemical weapons killed his family. Such accounts explain why the massacre’s consequences cannot be measured by a single casualty estimate. The bombing killed thousands at once while leaving children without parents, families without multiple generations of relatives, and survivors with memories of deaths they had witnessed directly.

Victims

The people killed at Halabja were Kurdish civilians, including women and children. Accounts of the bombing describe children suffocated by chemical weapons and residents watching parents or siblings choke to death. The estimated 5,000 fatalities represent a mass loss within one town. More than 10,000 others were wounded, and many who lived through the attack continued to suffer its effects thirty years later.

Respiratory damage was among the enduring harms. A survivor who inhaled the almond-smelling gas described nearly constant respiratory infections afterward. Doctors in Halabja reported sharp increases in lung fibrosis. These problems could require continuing care rather than a short period of treatment after the bombardment. Survivors’ need for medicine and medical support persisted even as the immediate event receded into history.

Medical workers also described reproductive and cancer-related effects. Doctors in Halabja reported increases in infertility and birth defects after the chemical attack. Staff at Halabja’s Emergency Hospital reported that rates of previously rare cancers and birth defects had risen by 300 to 1,000 percent. Medical specialists observed rising rates of rare cancers, particularly digestive and intestinal cancers. These were reported medical observations of severe, lasting health problems among a population exposed to chemical weapons.

The effects reached beyond hospital patients. Farmers in Halabja encountered reluctance from buyers who feared that produce grown there might be linked to birth defects. Peanuts, chickpeas, and melons were among the crops residents found harder to sell. That fear harmed livelihoods in a community already coping with deaths, injuries, and the cost of care. It also shows how the attack altered the town’s reputation and daily economic life years after the bombing.

Psychological suffering accompanied physical illness. Survivors remembered relatives killed in front of them, and children grew up in families reshaped by the loss of parents and siblings. One survivor who had been raised by an uncle spoke years later of dreaming about his dead brothers and sisters. Later restrictions affecting Kurdistan added stress to people already living with those memories and with chronic medical needs.

Perpetrators and responsibility

Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces perpetrated the Halabja massacre. Iraqi aircraft dropped the chemical bombs, and the attack occurred during his government’s broader campaign against the Kurds. The fact that Halabja lay within Iraq makes the assault especially stark: the government used chemical weapons against civilians living under its own rule.

Responsibility extends beyond the individual aircraft crews. A chemical air assault of this size required weapons, aircraft, planning, and a state apparatus able to direct military operations. Iraq’s extensive use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians during Anfal places Halabja within a policy of violent repression. Saddam Hussein’s leadership and the actions of Iraqi forces are central to the massacre’s history.

Halabja is remembered as part of a genocidal campaign against the Kurds. Across Anfal, Iraqi forces destroyed thousands of villages, killed large numbers of civilians, and attacked communities with chemical weapons. Halabja was one of the campaign’s most lethal single events. Describing it within Anfal recognizes both the particular losses of the town and the wider pattern of violence directed at Kurdish communities in 1987 and 1988.

Efforts to assign the gassing to another state do not account for the evidence of the Iraqi air attack. Subsequent analysis has rejected accusations that Iran shared responsibility for the chemical bombing of Halabja. Iraq’s use of chemical weapons at the town also fits its documented attacks on other Kurdish civilian settlements. The perpetrators of the massacre were Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces.

Response

International response to the gassing included an attempt to censure Saddam Hussein at a United Nations human rights body. On September 1, 1988, Halima Warzazi introduced a procedural motion that blocked a proposed censure over the attack on the Kurds of Halabja. A record of the proposed resolution referred to reports of Iraqi chemical weapons use against civilians, including the population of Halabja. The procedural defeat prevented that proposed censure from proceeding.

For survivors, access to treatment became a continuing concern. Hospitals in Halabja lacked sufficient medicine for people living with injuries from the gas attack. Shortages worsened conditions among patients who required ongoing support. Before later travel restrictions, foreign medical specialists could visit patients in Halabja. Those visits offered one route to expertise beyond what local hospitals could provide.

Baghdad’s withholding of Kurdistan’s budget share from 2014 deepened financial pressure on the region and on chemical-attack survivors. Some were unable to support themselves and their families while also needing care. Medicine shortages in Halabja’s hospitals added to the difficulty. The financial effects fell on people whose illnesses and disabilities had begun with the 1988 bombing.

After the 2017 independence referendum in Kurdistan, Iraq banned international flights through Kurdistan’s airports. The ban made it harder for wounded Halabja survivors to travel abroad for treatment and restricted visits by foreign specialists. It also impeded international aid, including medical supplies. New visa requirements further complicated visits from outside medical personnel. These measures affected survivors decades after the massacre, when many still needed continuous care.

Remembrance

March is a month of remembrance in Halabja. The anniversary of the March 16 attack falls close to Nowruz, a spring celebration important to Kurds. For families who lost relatives, the date recalls the sudden destruction of their community as well as the wider Anfal campaign. Its annual remembrance keeps attention on civilians killed by chemical weapons and on survivors whose injuries remain part of daily life.

Halabja’s history is preserved through the testimony of people who saw relatives die, fled the gas, or grew up after losing their families. Their accounts connect the estimated death toll to individual lives: a child raised by an uncle, a father who lost more than twenty relatives, and a woman left with recurring respiratory infections. They also record consequences less visible than the initial bombing, including infertility, cancer, difficulty obtaining medicine, and damage to local farming livelihoods.

The massacre remains a defining example of Saddam Hussein’s violence against the Kurds. Remembering Halabja also requires remembering the broader destruction of Anfal: thousands of villages razed, other civilians exposed to chemical weapons, and as many as 180,000 people killed across the campaign. The attack’s significance lies in both its immediate mass killing and its lasting effects on people who survived it.