SULAYMANIYAH
Five minutes of silence were held throughout the Kurdish regional administration in northern Iraq on Sunday, in memory of the up to 5,000 people killed during the Halabja Massacre 26 years ago.
Memorial ceremonies were organized in Halabja, Irbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok and Kirkuk and the silence was held at 11:00 local time across the region governed by the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government.
“The city vanished after the chemical attack," said Halabja's governor, Goran Edhem. "Thanks God we stood up as people and now we witness the days when Halabja is a province.”
Thousands of people chose to go by foot to the city, from all regions of Iraq and even neighboring Iran.
“Unfortunately, the world has not sincerely condemned the massacre. We want this massacre to be accepted as genocide,” said Ahmet Eminzade, the spokesperson of a group that walked for four days, from Bane city in Iran.
5,000 were killed and 7,000 injured when Iraq's then president Saddam Hussein ordered a chemical attack on the city on March 16, 1988.
The attack on the town took place at the end of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war as part of the "Anfal" campaign led by Saddam Hussein that targeted mainly the Kurdish population in northern Iraq. It was the largest chemical weapon attack in history.
Iraq's High Criminal Court recognized the massacre as genocide on March 1, 2010.
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