America Ordered to Pay WMD Compensation to Iran
 Halabja 1988: 5,000 Kurds gassed by Iraqi forces
11 May 2004
by Anai Rhoads
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AnaiRhoads.org - According to the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), an Iranian court ordered the United States Wednesday to pay $816.44 million ($600 million U.S.) for supplying Iraq's former president Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons.
A total of 39 gas attacks against the Kurds were ordered by the The Ba'ath regime. Halabja was bombarded with 20 chemical and cluster bombs on 16 March 1988, lasting a day. The city had an estimated population of 75,000 at the time.
Sardasht a small town just on the outskirts of Iraq, was gassed as revenge by Hussein after the Kurds created an uprising against his administration.
 Statue in Halabja memorialises the Iraqi regime's 1988 gas attack on the Kurds, in which 100,000 perished. Image Copyright Scott Peterson
The fighting began in 1980 and dragged on into 1988. The end-result of the 8-year long Iran-Iraq war left thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Iranians dead.
A spokesman for the IRNA said the money will go to the survivors of Sardasht, Iranian veterans, and to those left disabled from the gas attack.
During the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. promised they would back up Kurd rebellion if they were to stand up to Hussein, but in the end the Kurds were left naked against Hussein's fury.
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