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MANQOUBEH, Iraq April 27 — While the horrific images of streets strewn with bodies shook the world, many Iraqi Arabs remain unaware of Saddam Hussein's gas attack that killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds 15 years ago.And those Arabs who heard rumors of the slaughter in the northern city of Halabja say they did not believe them at the time. Some remain unconvinced today.The chemical attack on the Kurds stands as one of the most egregious examples of Saddam's brutality against his own people. It was cited by President Bush as proof that Saddam had the willingness and ability to use...

Nizar Khazraji, a prominent Iraqi general who defected to the West, was assassinated Monday on his way to attend a U.S.-called meeting of opposition groups in the southern city of Nassiriya. Khazraji was sometimes mentioned as a possible successor to Saddam Hussein. In February last year, London-based Arabic daily Al-Hayat quoted opposition sources in Syria as saying the US had chosen Khazraji to run Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam. The CIA was reported to have helped him escape to Kuwait from house arrest in Denmark, where prosecutors were investigating his alleged role in gas attacks on the Iraqi Kurds....

The streets of the Kurdish capital, Erbil, filled with American, Iraqi and Kurdish flags yesterday as tens of thousands took to the street to celebrate the demise of the regime. Kurdish Iraqis celebrate in the northern Iraqi town of Arbil "Saddam, the criminal, the murderer, the savage, wild animal is gone," shouted a widow, Fauziya Ali, 45. "The black criminal, perpetrator of Halabja, is dead," she said. Halabja, a town that bore the brunt of Saddam Hussein's genocidal attempt to quell the Kurds with nerve agents and chemical weapons, is foremost among the reasons that the Kurdish people hunger for...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 4/12/03 - Mosul, Jabal Maqlub, Ghazel, Khaneqin, Arbil, Kalak, Kifry, Hadithah dam, Shamamer, Halabja, Chamchamal, Kirkuk, Altun Kupri, Tuz Khurmatu, Dohuk BREAKING: Mosul - Iraqis surrender BREAKING: Jabal Maqlub - SF special contributions BREAKING: Ghazel - Bridge destroyed by Iraqis, but captured BREAKING: Khaneqin - liberated from Saddam BREAKING: Arbil - freedom with the help of the USA BREAKING: Arbil - More Iraqi atropine injectors captured BREAKING: Kalak - freedom after airstrikes BREAKING: Kifry - freedom after Iraqi rockets BREAKING: Hadithah dam - champion US Special Forces secured it BREAKING: Shamamer -...

HALABJA, Iraq: Tears streamed down Fakhradeen Saleem's face on Wednesday as he watched television images of Saddam Hussein's government crumbling in Baghdad. Listening to his devastating story of loss at the hands of the Baathist administration, it was not hard to see why. The softly-spoken teacher, 54, took nearly two hours to explain what happened in this run-down northern Iraqi town on March 16, 1988, a date etched in the memory of millions of Kurds. On that day Iraqi warplanes roared over the town, dropping chemical weapons including nerve agents which killed 5,000 people in the dying days of the...

U.S. officials tell NBC News they believe an overnight airstrike has killed the man known as “Chemical Ali,” a cousin of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and commander of Iraq’s southern front. Meanwhile, leaders of the ruling Baath Party in Iraq’s second city Basra fear public reprisals and were seeking to negotiate a surrender to British military forces besieging the city, a pan-Arab newspaper reported. MILITARY SOURCES told NBC News that bomb damage assessments and other intelligence indicate that the strike killed Ali Hassan al-Majeed and others, although his death has yet to be formally confirmed on the ground. “The strike...

GOTTA SEE THIS - War for Enduring Freedom 4/3/03 - Rescues, Najaf, Nasiriyah, Arbil, Umm Qasr BREAKING: Freed behind Enemy Lines - POW Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch BREAKING: Freed in Az Zubaya - Black Watch BREAKING: Baghdad - Republican Guard palace + BREAKING: Najaf - cache of Iraqi weapons from Saddam's military school BREAKING: Nasiriyah - Battle lines BREAKING: Nasiriyah - captured Iraqi military base BREAKING: Nasiriyah - WMD-suits, masks and ammunition which were found at military installation BREAKING: Nasiriyah - freed Iraqi bedouins BREAKING: Arbil - Atropine injectors left by retreating Iraqis BREAKING: Halabja - New sheriff in town...

HALABJA, Iraq - U.S. specialists have discovered evidence that a Kurdish Islamic militant group that the Bush administration has linked to al-Qaida was concocting chemical weapons in the mountains of northeastern Iraq, a U.S. military commander said Tuesday. The special forces soldiers also found recipes for three forms of chlorine gas and for ricin, a deadly toxin derived from castor beans, American intelligence officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity. U.S. aircraft, 100 American special forces and more than 8,000 Kurdish fighters on Friday swept the Ansar al Islam ("Partisans of Islam") militants out of the sliver of territory...

WASHINGTON - One of Saddam Hussein's most feared and hated hatchet men oversees the forces that are defending the southern front in Iraq. Ali Hassan al Majid, a cousin of the Iraqi leader, earned his nickname, "Chemical Ali," by overseeing the fatal gassing of thousands of Iraqi Kurds. He may be behind the suicide attack on a U.S. Army checkpoint that killed five people Saturday and the recent shooting of civilians who were trying to flee Basra. "He has been involved in some of Iraq's worst crimes, including genocide and crimes against humanity," Kenneth Roth, the head of New...

When Mazin Alkabbi awoke from an anesthesia-induced slumber on a morning in 1994, Iraqi authorities gave him grim news: He had been in a car accident and lost his ears. Alkabbi knew better. There had been no accident. His ears had been surgically removed because he fled the military when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991. Just hours before the surgery, he was arrested at his home in Basra. Alkabbi, who now lives in Arlington, remembered having his hands tied, being blindfolded and at one point even thinking he might just be questioned and released. His Iraqi identification...

In a chilling signal to the Allies, the woman who runs Iraq's chemical warfare programme has been shown on TV at Saddam Hussein's war cabinet. Scientist Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, known as Mrs Anthrax to Western intelligence, was sitting next to Saddam Hussein's son Qusay. The pictures, broadcast by Iraqi television, send a clear message to the West and increase fears that the Iraqi dictator is on the brink of using his weapons of mass destruction. The woman is the key figure behind Iraq's illegal weapons programme and helped rebuild his biological capibility after the Gulf war in 1991. But...

Powell cites report that Iraq plans chemical attack WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday the United States had heard reports that the Iraqi authorities planned to use chemical weapons against Iraqis in the south and blame it on the United States. "There are such reports. I have no doubt that he (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) would do such a thing if he thought it served his interest," Powell told the Fox News network in an interview. "We are concerned about it. We will follow this matter carefully. We will also get everything...

Chemical arms use 'authorised' IRAQI commanders have been authorised to use chemical weapons against Shiite Muslims in the south of the country and blame the attacks on US forces, a senior American official has claimed. The State Department official said reports led Washington to believe Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had given such authority to one of his top generals, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who is also known as Chemical Ali. He was blamed for the poison gas attack 15 years ago in the Kurdish town of Halabja. "We have reports that would indicate the Iraqis intend to or could use chemical...

US special forces teams have begun flying into Iraqi Kurdistan to help with the battle against an alleged Al Qaeda-linked group and prepare for the opening of a northern front against Baghdad, a senior Kurdish official said. The top political official confirmed four transport planes carrying "scores" of US personnel, mostly special forces, flew into an airstrip outside Sulaymaniyah overnight on Saturday. "They are being deployed across the region," said the high-ranking official from the pro-US Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Another source said the planes were carrying 280 lightly armed troops and many had been deployed around the town...

Iraq suicide attack kills four Four people have been killed in a suicide bombing at a checkpoint near the northern Iraqi town of Halabja. The bomber drove up in a taxi and detonated the device, killing himself and a journalist filming nearby. The other dead were Kurdish peshmerga fighters. Nine people who were injured have been taken to hospital in Sulaymaniyah. The area where the bombing happened is controlled by an Islamist group known as Komola.

Car bomb kills journalist, hurts 9 people in N.Iraq HALABJA, Iraq, March 22 (Reuters) - At least one journalist was killed and nine other people injured on Saturday in a car bombing in northern Iraq that Kurdish officials blamed on a militant Islamist group. The nationality of the journalist was not immediately known. Security officials of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) said they believed the Ansar al-Islam group, which Washington has linked with al-Qaeda, was responsible for the bombing outside the village of Khurmal. The village is in a mountainous area which is the stronghold of Ansar, close to...

Iraq Kurds say US targets Qaeda-linked militants HALABJA, Iraq, March 22 (Reuters) - A Kurdish faction running part of northern Iraq said U.S. forces had fired missiles and launched an air raid on Saturday on the stronghold of an Islamist group Washington accuses of ties to al Qaeda. A senior official of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had initially claimed it attacked Ansar al-Islam -- which has hundreds of fighters in a string of villages near the Iranian border -- but later said the PUK had had no role in the strikes. "They launched Tomahawk missiles onto Ansar positions...

   Monday, Mar 17, 2003 Opinion Posted on Mon, Mar. 17, 2003 A survivor of Saddam Hussein's terror argues for war By Freshta Raper LONDON - Do the demonstrators who have been filling the streets in the capitals of civilized, comfortable nations in the West in opposition to a war against Iraq have any idea what they are protesting?I have been imprisoned, tortured and gassed by Saddam Hussein's regime. I know what life is like inside Iraq.So I can assure these demonstrators that they wouldn't survive a month if they were dropped into Baghdad and forced to live as...

HALABJA, Iraq - Across northern Iraq (news - web sites), Kurds observed a moment of silence Sunday to remember the day 15 years ago that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s forces launched a chemical attack on Halabja, killing 5,000 men, women and children. The March 16, 1988, attack gave this city a painful place in history — and as the United States prepares for possible war against Baghdad, American officials often cite the attack as an example of Saddam's cruelty and his readiness to use weapons of mass destruction. Halabja — where nearly every resident lost at least one...

NICOSIA, March 16 (AFP) -- Fifteen years ago about 5,000 Kurds, mostly women and children, perished a few minutes after Iraqi fighter jets spread poison gas over Halabja in Iraq's Kurdistan region. Iraq, which was at war with Iran at the time, became angry with the Kurds after fighters from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan with the help of Iran took over Halabja, an agricultural town of about 40,000 some 250 kilometers (155 miles) from Baghdad but just 11 kilometers (7 miles) from the Iranian border. The Iraqi army started by bombing the Halabja area with artillery and fighter...