Crimes of Saddam Hussein's regime

The al-Anfal Campaign:

 The worst human rights abuses of Hussein's tenure took place during the genocidal al-Anfal Campaign (1986-1989),in which Hussein's administration called for the extermination of every living thing human or animal in certain regions of the Kurdish north. All told, some 182,000 people--men, women, and children were slaughtered, many through use of chemical weapons. The Halabja poison gas massacre of 1988 alone killed over 5,000 people. Hussein later blamed the attacks on the Iranians, and the Reagan administration, which supported Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War, helped promote this cover story.