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Sasan Muayadi of Iran, the first of many photographers to arrive in Halabja shortly after Saddam Hussein dropped chemical weapons on the city, recounts his story in the first few days following the brutal attack.
He worked in Tehran during the final weeks of the Iraq-Iran war when he received the news that Halabja had been “gassed.”
After first flying to Kermanshah and documenting several cases of badly injured people at its overwhelmed hospital, he continued on to Halabja, arriving 13 hours after the attack took place.
“I stayed in Halabja for 48 hours,” Muayadi told Rudaw. “I took photos in every alley in Halabja.
“I couldn’t help with anything,” he continued. “There were only dead bodies of martyrs lying in front of me. I couldn’t do anything.”
Muayadi, who had small children of his own at the time, said one of the most painful memories he had of those first few days in Halabja following the attack was seeing the bodies of dead children.
“I was always visualizing my children,” he said. “The death of children pains me a lot.”
Muayadi spoke of the fallen body of Omari Khawar and his infant son, a photograph that brought worldwide attention to the genocide against the Kurdish people of Halabja.
“Looking at the photo, the incident appears to have just happened given the glowing white face of the baby,” he recalled.
The city of Halabja and all of Kurdistan commemorated those killed in the largest chemical weapon attack against a civilian population on Friday, the 30th anniversary.
On March 16, 1988, when the former Iraqi regime dropped a deadly cocktail of mustard gas, cyanide, and sarin in an attempt to eradicate the Kurdish resistance, 5,000 people died and another 10,000 were injured, many of them and their children still suffering the effects of the attack today.
Produced by Barzan Mihemed
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