re: vermav a liberal's war, too: against innocenc
Dr. Christine Gosden Pt3
The Attack on Halabja
Let me begin by describing the poison gas attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja. This was, let me emphasize, the largest-scale chemical weapons (CW) attack against a civilian population in modern times.
Halabja was a bustling city in Northern Iraq with a population which was predominantly Kurdish and had sympathised with Iran during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The population at the time of the attack was about 80,000 people. Troops from the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) entered Halabja on 15th March 1988 amidst heavy resistance from Iraqi security and military forces.
Halabja fell to the PUK troops (accompanied by Iranian revolutionary guards) four hours later. The Iraqis responded with heavy artillery fire and an early wave of six aircraft bombarded an area near Halabja with ordinary high explosives. The civilians had been prevented from leaving the town by the PUK, hoping that the Iraqis would not attack a town with civilians in it -- thus providing a human shield.
The CW attack began early in the evening of March 16th, when a group of eight aircraft began dropping chemical bombs; the chemical bombardment continued all night. According to Kurdish commanders on the scene, there were 14 aircraft sorties during the night, with seven to eight planes in each group, and they concentrated their attack on the city and all the roads leading out of Halabja. The chemical attacks continued until the 19th. Iraqi planes would attack for about 45 minutes and then, after they had gone, another group would appear 15 minutes later.
Let me emphasize that this was not the first chemical attack by Saddam Hussein. Previous attacks had been launched by Iraqi aircraft against 20 small villages in 1987. However, the scale and intensity of the chemical campaign against Halabja was entirely different -- this was the first time that chemical weapons had been used on a major civilian population of this size. The victims of the attack included women, children and the elderly.
