Kurdistan Region President Commemorates 39th Anniversary of Balisan Chemical Attack

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) - Thirty-nine years on the memory of what happened in Balisan, Sheikh Wasan, and the Khoshnawati valley has not faded. On the 39th anniversary of the chemical attack carried out by the former Iraqi regime in 1987, Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani issued a statement paying solemn tribute to the victims and reaffirming that the crimes committed against Kurdistan's people will never be forgotten.

"Today we recall that crime committed by the former Iraqi regime in 1987, which represented the beginning of the brutal chemical bombardment atrocities carried out against civilians, the land, and the beautiful nature of Kurdistan," Barzani said on Thursday in his statement.

The president said: "On this painful anniversary, we bow in reverence and respect to the pure souls of the immortal martyrs, and we salute their proud families and the victims of that tragedy,"

He noted that the targeted areas had always been centers of Kurdish patriotism and launching points of support for the revolution and the Peshmerga forces — a distinction that made them targets of what he described as that "black campaign."

Barzani also paid tribute to the resilience of the Kurdish people in the face of that brutality. "Despite the heinousness of the crime, the people of Kurdistan remained steadfast, and oblivion was the fate of the criminals," he said, closing his statement with a salute to the pure souls of the martyrs of Khoshnawati and all the martyrs of Kurdistan.