KURDISH officials warned that the genocidal attacks of Saddam Hussein’s brutal Ba’athist regime are being continued today by the Turkish state as they marked the anniversary of the 1988 Halabja massacre.

March is a month of “sorrow, struggle and uprisings,” the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) said in a statement today as commemorations were held across the region.

“In the city of Halabja, the dictator and fascist Saddam dictatorship used chemical weapons to kill almost 5,000 people, including children, women and the elderly. 

“This horrible massacre is still in the minds and souls of the Kurdish people and it will not be forgotten,” it said.

But the umbrella organisation said that the Turkish state was continuing to perpetrate atrocities using chemical weapons which are being fired indiscriminately against the Kurdish people in the mountainous border Duhok province.

“As KNK, we want the United Nations, European Union, and International Court of Justice to recognise the Halabja atrocity as genocide and bring the perpetrators to justice,” it continued.

“The Kurdish people will never forget the massacre in Halabja. The massacre in Halabja will live on in the minds of Kurds for the rest of their lives. May the souls of Halabja’s martyrs rest in peace.”

Survivors and relative of those killed in the Halabja massacre 34 years ago continue the struggle for justice, telling a British delegation last week that they have been abandoned by political leaders.

The town is suffering a lack of investment in jobs and infrastructure while special pensions for the victims have failed to materialise.

Iraqi President Barham Salih, a Kurd from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, described the massacre in Halabja as a “crime against humanity.”

“This atrocity, perpetrated through injustice and tyranny, has inspired a determination to fight for the right to live a free and dignified life,” he said.