HALABJA, Kurdistan Region – The memorial museum of Halabja has received an Iraqi fighter jet believed to have been used in the chemical attack on the city on March 16, 1988.
The Soviet-made Sukhoi-modelled fighter jet had been kept in the city of Kirkuk, Abu Bakir Ibrahim, a Peshmerga commander told Rudaw.
It was transported to the city’s museum on Monday, to be added to a collection of weapons used in the chemical attack and shown to the public.
Halabja is the site of the worst chemical attack ever carried out against a civilian population in history. Iraqi jets trying to expel Kurdish Peshmerga and Iranian forces dropped chemical bombs on the city, killing 5,000 civilians within hours.
Sarkhel Ghafar, the director of the museum, said bringing the old jet to the memorial museum was part of documenting the weapons the Iraqi regime used to attack the city.
Iraqi air force used different types of fighter-bombers on that day, including MiG, Mirage, and Sukhoi, according to the testimonies of the chemical attack survivors and the rights organizations Human Rights Watch, which published a comprehensive report in 1993 titled Genocide in Iraq, chronicling the Anfal campaign against the Kurds.
“The symptoms described by survivors are consistent with exposure to both mustard gas and a nerve agent such as Sarin,” the HRW report said.