KURDISH COMMUNITY MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF MASSACRE

This article appears in today's Leicester Mercury:

Kurdish community marks anniversary of massacre

Kurdish people and university students marked the 25th anniversary of a massacre committed by Saddam Hussein.

In 1988, a poison gas attack was ordered by the former Iraqi dictator on the town of Halabja, in northern Iraq, killing about 5,000 people.

To commemorate the anniversary on March 15, members of the Kurdish community and other guests met at the University of Leicester's Charles Wilson Building for a vigil of silence.

More than 150 people attended. Among them was Karzan Karim, a PhD biology student at the university, who was only five miles away when the attack occurred.

He said: "As a 12-year-old, I heard the planes overhead that went to Halabja and I saw the cloud which we found out later to be the poison gas that killed people in a matter of minutes.

"We wish to honour the memory of those who died and, by remembering the massacre, to raise public awareness of the plight of Kurds." 

The photo above shows Karzan Karim (on the right) with Hataw Hussein.