Survivors Recall Massacre Against Iraqi Kurds

In June 2007, Rubbar Mohammed visits the grave of her family members who were killed in a chemical attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1998, in Halabja, Iraq. (Yahya Ahmed/AP)

Almost 25 years have passed since the town of Halabja in northern Iraq suffered the worst chemical weapons attack ever perpetrated against a civilian population.

At least 5,000 people are thought to have died in what is now seen as a campaign of genocide launched by Saddam Hussein against the Iraqi Kurds.

The BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson was one of the first international journalists to reach Halabja in 1988, and he went back to meet some of the survivors.

• BBC: The survivors of Halabja 25 years on