Iraq finds mass grave in Kurdistan

The Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has discovered mass graves with tens of bodies belonging to the Kurdish victims of the infamous Anfal genocide by Saddam Hussein’s regime in the late 1980s, informed sources said Saturday. "A total of 80 bodies of Kurd victims of the Anfal tragic incident have been discovered in Kirkuk border region in Northern Iraq," an informed source at the KRG told FNA on Saturday. He underlined that Iraq's Baathist regime had executed all of the 80 Kurds. The source said that the bodies of the Anfal genocide will be buried during a special ceremony to be attended by Iraqi officials and people in a cemetery in the Southern part of Kirkuk province. The al-Anfal Campaign also known as the Kurdish Genocide, Operation Anfal or simply Anfal, was a genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people (and other non-Arab populations) in Northern Iraq, led by Baathist Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and headed by Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as Chemical Ali, in the final days of Iran-Iraq War (1980-88). The campaign started in 1986 and culminated in 1988. In all nine Anfals were conducted, ending on August 26, 1988. On September 6, 1988 the government declared a general "amnesty" for Kurds, although many continued to be held - and die - in the camps and prisons. Human Rights Watch said 2,000 villages were destroyed, as well as dozens of towns and administrative centers, including Qala Dizeh which had had 70,000 residents. Majid and two other former top Baath officials were sentenced to death for their part in the campaign on 24 June 2007, nearly six months after Saddam's execution for other crimes. Two other officials received life sentences. In the context of the campaign, Iraq became the first government to use chemical weapons against its own people. It dropped mustard gas and sarin on rebel areas, with heavy loss of civilian life, as early as April 1987 - according to Human Rights Watch. The worst incident - which did not technically come under the Anfal operations - was in Halabja, where 5,000 civilian inhabitants are thought to have died in an aerial bombardment of mustard gas and nerve agents (sarin, tabun and VX). The military campaign proper began on 23 February 1988 - when the Iraqi army began its sweep through the "prohibited areas" - the first attack on (now Iraqi President) Jalal Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) headquarters at Sergalou-Bergalou.