Thirty-seven years ago, the Saddam regime's air force covered Halabja with a poisonous blanket. In a matter of hours, some 5,000 people were horrifically murdered, and more than 10,000 were left with scars that will never be erased.

Halabja was just one episode in a systematic process of extermination. The Anfal campaign between 1987 and 1988 sought to wipe the Kurdish presence off the map. Thousands of villages were razed to the ground, some 200,000 people were brutally murdered and their bodies dumped in mass graves in the desert.

Southern Kurdistan

As in every year, the victims of the Halabja Massacre were commemorated with many events and ceremonies in the cities and towns in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Life stopped at 11.30 am when the Kurdish city of Halabja was subjected to a chemical attack by the Baath regime in 1988.

In Halabja, three days of commemoration ceremonies started. In addition to political statements, artistic events, panels and seminars will be held to pay tribute to the victims.

A commemoration ceremony was held in the Chamchamal district of Sulaymaniyah on the occasion of the 37th anniversary of the Halabja massacre. The ceremony demanded that the Iraqi government officially apologize to the Kurdish people and compensate the victims of the chemical attack.

Eastern Kurdistan

In Eastern Kurdistan (Iran), religious scholars, citizens and children commemorated the martyrs of the chemical attack in Halabja. Children recited poems at a ceremony in Tifl village of Sewlawa town in Sine (Sanandaj) province.

Halabja martyrs were commemorated with events organized in Saqqez and Mariwan cities of Eastern Kurdistan as well.

The commemoration event in Saqqez was attended by residents of the city as well as many environmental activists. Dozens of beech and oak saplings were planted at the event.

At the commemoration event in Mariwan, members of the Mountain Environmental Group and students from the city planted many trees.