Baghdad Uses Mustard Gas on Kurdish Rebels

On Aug. 20, 1988, Iraq accepted and signed a UN organized ceasefire with Iran, thus ending officially an eight-year-long war. But the conflict did not end for everyone. In the hours following the ceasefire, Iraq's Republican Guards turned on the Kurdish rebels.On Aug. 25, the Iraqi minority was the target of the most ferocious chemical attack. By Aug. 29, thousands of Iraqi Kurds had reached the Turkish border but Ankara never let them in.By the end of September, 478 Kurdish villages near the Turkish border had been destroyed. An estimated 40,000 were deported to concentration camps. More than 3,000 were executed.A report of the Senate mission, dated September 1988, unambiguously states: "Right now the Kurds are paying the price for past global indifference to Iraqi chemical weapons use. The failure to act now could ultimately leave every nation in peril." Read full story