Iraq’s parliament to declare the “Governorate of Halabja ”

In December 2018, the Kurdistan Regional Government had decided to declare Halabja as the fourth governorate in the Region and the 19th in Iraq, but Baghdad has not approved this decision.

This vote comes on the 33rd anniversary of bombing Halabja with chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein's regime.

The incident was the largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians. Preliminary results from surveys of the affected region showed an increased rate of cancer and birth defects in the years afterward.

The Halabja attack has been officially defined by the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal as a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.