(New York Times) C. J. Chivers - On March 16, 1988, waves of Iraqi warplanes dropped gas canisters on Halabja, a Kurdish village of roughly 50,000 people, bathing neighborhoods in what is believed to have been a misty cocktail of nerve and blister agents - sarin, tabun, mustard, VX - and perhaps the biological agent aflatoxin as well. Before nightfall the dead littered basements and the streets. Estimates of the dead range from 3,200 to 7,000. An additional 15,000 to 20,000 people were injured, Kurdish doctors say.
2002-12-12 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive