Iraq marks 25th anniversary of Halabja attack

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Kurdish people in Iraq Saturday remembered the some 5,000 people killed 25 years ago during an attack on one of their villages.

Family members held pictures of loved ones during a ceremony in Halabja- the village in north-eastern Iraq where the massacre took place.

On March 16, 1988, then ruler Saddam Hussein used an arson of chemical weapons to kill nearly 5,000 people in the country's northeast Kurdish region.

25 years later, the memories are still fresh.

I lost 40 members of my family, this man said, recounting the sight of bodies scattered across the ground.

Halabja, which is near Iraq's border with Iran, became synonymous with atrocities against civilians after the attack.

Iraqi Kurds have nicknamed Halabja the "town of martyrs".