Remembrance of Chemical Attack on Balisan and Sheikh Wasan in Iraqi Kurdistan
Remembrance of Chemical Attack on Balisan and Sheikh Wasan in Iraqi Kurdistan is held on April 16. This event in the second decade of the month April is annual. Help us
Most prominently, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better known as Chemical Ali, is thought to be responsible for the horrific 1988 chemical attack at Halabja in Iraq that killed more than 5,000 Kurds. But that campaign began almost a year before that. On April 16th, 1987, the Iraqi government bombed two small Kurdish villages in northern Iraq, Balisan and Sheikh Wassan, with mustard gas. Those villages were apparently a testing ground for future attacks.
Similar holidays and events, festivals and interesting facts
Hillsborough Disaster Memorial on April 15 (Liverpool, England);
Holocaust Remembrance Day in Poland on April 19 (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising remembered on April 19);
Iqbal Day in Pakistan on April 21 (in memory of the death of the poet in 1938. He was the president of the Muslim League of Muhammad Iqbal and is considered there the spiritual father of Pakistan);