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SULAIMANIYA: Sirens sounded and streets fell silent on Sunday as Iraqi Kurds marked the 15th anniversary of a chemical attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces on the town of Halabja that killed 5,000 people in a single day.
US President George W. Bush, whose forces are poised to attack Iraq, drew attention to the atrocity in a radio address on Saturday, but survivors said his words came 15 years too late.
“If America is using this attack on Halabja as a justification for war, then they should have attacked Saddam in 1988, not now,” said Rubar Mohammad, 32, who lost a husband she suspects is buried in one of Halabja’s mass graves.
“It is too late to raise this issue now. It should have been talked about when it actually happened,” she said in Sulaimaniya, a city in northern Iraq some 70 kms northwest of Halabja.
Star Hussein Allahkerem, 46, another survivor of the attack, recalled in his home in Halabja earlier this week how the West, including the United States, was supporting the Iraqi president at the time of the attack in his war against neighbouring Iran.
Still bearing scars on his face and scalp from the bombs dropped by Iraqi warplanes, he said he was furious Washington and its allies could use Halabja to justify their own ends.
“At that time the outside world was with Saddam,” he said.
SURVIVORS WANT SADDAM DEAD: Halabja survivors still traumatized by the sights and sounds of March 16, 1988, want nothing more than to see Saddam dead.
Zaki Saeed recounted in a recent interview in Sulaimaniya how she lost a daughter who had gone to Halabja on the morning of the attack to see her family.
Tania, 20 at the time, died in a basement with three cousins. Her uncle was forced to bury his three children on the spot before fleeing to safety with two others. Two more ran away during the panic, never to be seen again.
“His (Saddam’s) death would bring me so much joy,” said Saeed, in her 50s. “This is my biggest wish. I want him torn to pieces in front of my very eyes.”
Witnesses recalled Iraqi fighters bombing the town at around 11.30 a.m. and different coloured smoke rising from the explosions. Some said they smelt apples, others garlic, but instead they were inhaling mustard gas and nerve agents.
Many lost all strength in their legs, preventing them from fleeing. Some fainted, regaining consciousness only after they had been brought to safety in Iran.
A few remember the devastation caused by the attack — bodies strewn on the ground and cries of help from the dying.
In Sulaimaniya on Sunday traffic halted and people stopped in the streets for two minutes’ silence to remember Halabja.
A petition has been signed by 350,000 Kurds calling for protection by the United States, in the event of war in Iraq, against possible retaliation by Saddam against the Kurds.
In Arbil, the main city in the northern Iraqi enclave wrested from Saddam by the Kurds after the 1991 Gulf War, around 1,000 people, many of them weeping, gathered near the ancient citadel.
“The only thing to compare with Halabja was the (atomic) bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in Japan, said Ahmad Sultan, a resident of Arbil. “They were martyrs.”
Now people in Halabja want help to revive the run-down town.
“We want to rebuild Halabja to wipe out the memories of the past,” said widow Mohammad. “As long as Saddam is in power, our wounds will never heal.”—Reuters
