Halabja’s Endless Grief: 38 Years After the chemical attack, Memory and Mourning Endure

16-03-2026 08:35

Peregraf — Thirty-eight years after the Halabja chemical attack, the pain of that day still echoes across the city and in the hearts of its people.

On March 16, 1988, the Baath regime, led by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, launched a chemical attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja. Chemical weapons rained down on the city, killing more than 5,000 civilians within hours. Thousands more were injured or forced to flee, many of them women and children.

But beyond the graves and the survivors’ scars lies another tragedy that remains unresolved: the fate of the missing children.

A 2023 report by Peregraf found that about 75 families are still searching for their sons and daughters, with more than 200 children from Halabja still unaccounted for. The Halabja Victims Association says that after years of investigation, only eight children have been reunited with their families. Five others have come forward believing they may be survivors, but their cases remain unresolved.

Each year on this day, Halabja mourns its dead. Yet for the families of the missing, the anniversary is not only a day of remembrance — it is a reopening of wounds, and a quiet hope that somewhere, somehow, the children they lost decades ago might still be found.