Thinking they had reached safety in Iran, Kurdish villagers were again attacked with chemical weapons. JAWAHIR HASSAN AHMAD lost one of her five children when an Iranian refugee camp she was living in was gassed by Iraqi jets.
Facing relentless Iraqi poison gas attacks, thousands of Kurds fled through heavy rain and blizzards towards Iran. KHIDIR MUSA MOHAMMED AMEEN describes how he carried his nephew on his back for hours before realising the boy had frozen to death.
There were very few trained medics able to treat gas victims after the Balisan valley attacks in 1987. DOCTOR ZYRIAN ABDUL YOUNIS was the only peshmerga doctor in a region stretching from Erbil to Iran.
The chemical attacks against the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the flight of thousands of Kurds towards Iran have been likened to the apocalypse. Two of MIRIAM AHMED WSU’s children died as she fled barefoot in deep snow towards Iran.
Peshmerga in the far north of Kurdistan fled with their families towards Iran to escape poison gas attacks. When his leader Masoud Barzani told him it was impossible to send support units, commander AMIN HUSSEIN AHMED realised there was no escape.
A massive Iraqi gas attack on the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) killed many peshmerga. SHORSH HAJI MUSTAFA RASOOL, an intelligence officer, was extraordinarily lucky to survive after his house was hit by gas shell which failed to explode.
The launch of Iraq’s Anfal campaign against the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’ (PUK) headquarters changed the course of the Kurds’ war against the central government. KAMARAN ALI AMIN witnessed a gas attack that was so bad peshmerga in his unit threatened to commit suicide.
