Shafaq News/ The northeastern Syrian city of Derik, inhabited by a Kurdish majority, commemorated the 33rd anniversary of Saddam Hussein's poison gas attack against the Iraqi city of Halabja, which killed some 5,000 people mostly women and children.

Shafaq News Agency correspondent said that shops rolled down their coiling doors at 1100 am, the exact same moment the attack took place at. The residents, shopkeepers, and employees in civil institutions stood in silence near the shops and the square of the city's market in tribute to the victims of the massacre. 

On March 16, 1988, Saddam's forces unleashed a cocktail of deadly gases on the Kurdish community in Northern Iraq.