Nyakipambo
JF-Expert Member
- Nov 10, 2011
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[h=1]Halabja chemical weapons: A chance to find the men who armed Saddam[/h]
By John SimpsonWorld Affairs Editor, BBC News
Nearly 25 years ago, Iraqi forces killed thousands of their own civilians using chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Now steps are about to be taken to discover which country - and possibly which factory - supplied some of the chemicals.
The result of the chemical warfare attack on Halabja, on 16 March 1988, was one of the worst sights I have ever seen. Everywhere there were huddled bodies, lying in the street, sheltering against walls.
When I looked closer, I could see that many of them were protecting someone else, who was also dead: a baby, a child, a wife.
There was no protection against the nerve agents and gases which Saddam Hussein's men had dropped indiscriminately on Halabja to teach its Kurdish inhabitants a lesson.
An exhibit at the Halabja Museum reconstructs the chemical weapons attack
I had seen the results of chemical warfare against soldiers, earlier in the Iran-Iraq War; that was terrible enough. But seeing what these insidious, cruel gases did to wholly unprotected men, women and children was worse.
Sometimes the gases which the Iraqi air force had used had an almost instantaneous effect. I saw one house where a bomb had penetrated the ceiling of a room in which several people had been eating a meal.
All were dead; but it had clearly happened within a second or so. One old man had died as he bit off a piece of bread. Another was smiling, and seemed to have been cut off in the middle of a joke.
Other people had died slowly and in the most excruciating pain.
I saw a woman whose body was twisted almost into a circle, the back of her head touching her feet. There was vomit and blood on her clothes, and her face was contorted in agony.
Why had these people died? Because, in the last weeks of the Iran-Iraq War, Halabja had greeted the advancing Iranian troops with joy. Saddam Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", decided to make an example of them.
Chemical weapons deformed the face of Halabja resident Hafsa Hama Faraj Rahman
The Iraqi air force used a variety of chemicals against the town: nerve agents like VX, Sarin and Tabun, and the terrible but far more primitive mustard gas, the use of which dates back to World War I.Nowadays, some of the bombs which were used are displayed at the museum in Halabja. Many are equipped with internal fans, which were used to mix the chemicals together.
There were two days of conventional bombing before the gas attack. It seems as though Ali Hassan al-Majid wanted to break the windows in the town, so there would be as little resistance to the gas as possible.
I was flown into Halabja, together with a small group of other foreign journalists, by the Iranian air force.
[h=2]What weapons were used?[/h]
BBC News - Halabja chemical weapons: A chance to find the men who armed Saddam
By John SimpsonWorld Affairs Editor, BBC News
Nearly 25 years ago, Iraqi forces killed thousands of their own civilians using chemical weapons on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Now steps are about to be taken to discover which country - and possibly which factory - supplied some of the chemicals.
The result of the chemical warfare attack on Halabja, on 16 March 1988, was one of the worst sights I have ever seen. Everywhere there were huddled bodies, lying in the street, sheltering against walls.
When I looked closer, I could see that many of them were protecting someone else, who was also dead: a baby, a child, a wife.
There was no protection against the nerve agents and gases which Saddam Hussein's men had dropped indiscriminately on Halabja to teach its Kurdish inhabitants a lesson.
An exhibit at the Halabja Museum reconstructs the chemical weapons attack
I had seen the results of chemical warfare against soldiers, earlier in the Iran-Iraq War; that was terrible enough. But seeing what these insidious, cruel gases did to wholly unprotected men, women and children was worse.
Sometimes the gases which the Iraqi air force had used had an almost instantaneous effect. I saw one house where a bomb had penetrated the ceiling of a room in which several people had been eating a meal.
All were dead; but it had clearly happened within a second or so. One old man had died as he bit off a piece of bread. Another was smiling, and seemed to have been cut off in the middle of a joke.
Other people had died slowly and in the most excruciating pain.
I saw a woman whose body was twisted almost into a circle, the back of her head touching her feet. There was vomit and blood on her clothes, and her face was contorted in agony.
Why had these people died? Because, in the last weeks of the Iran-Iraq War, Halabja had greeted the advancing Iranian troops with joy. Saddam Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali", decided to make an example of them.
Chemical weapons deformed the face of Halabja resident Hafsa Hama Faraj Rahman
The Iraqi air force used a variety of chemicals against the town: nerve agents like VX, Sarin and Tabun, and the terrible but far more primitive mustard gas, the use of which dates back to World War I.Nowadays, some of the bombs which were used are displayed at the museum in Halabja. Many are equipped with internal fans, which were used to mix the chemicals together.
There were two days of conventional bombing before the gas attack. It seems as though Ali Hassan al-Majid wanted to break the windows in the town, so there would be as little resistance to the gas as possible.
I was flown into Halabja, together with a small group of other foreign journalists, by the Iranian air force.
[h=2]What weapons were used?[/h]
- Saddam Hussein used Tabun extensively from 1984 onwards, but it was expensive to make and the precursors were hard to obtain
- He later moved mostly to VX gas, which is more powerful and more persistent - by 1988 he had more than 3.9 tonnes
- But the main nerve agent available in terms of quantity was Sarin
- Saddam Hussein also valued mustard gas because of its long-term effects, including blindness, cancers, infertility and birth defect
BBC News - Halabja chemical weapons: A chance to find the men who armed Saddam