Int’l silence on 1978 Sardasht chemical attack becomes 35 years old

he Sardasht chemical bombardment is a document of oppression against the Iranian people.

When Iraqi warplanes targeted the city of Sardasht in the northwestern Iranian province of West Azarbaijan on June 28, 1987, with chemical weapons, over 100 citizens of the city were martyred and thousands of the people were wounded by the deadly chemical attacks.

The support extended to the then Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who imposed the eight-year war against Iran in 1980 and the ongoing silence about this crime which deprived the Iranian people of their rights are a black record for the West, global society, and Iraq’s Baath regime.

After being bombarded, the people of Sardasht who were unaware of such deadly chemical bombs rushed for helping the injured, which led to an increase in the number of the wounded because the air was polluted by the bombs.

As the city and the whole country were under war conditions, transfer of the injured to other cities took place slowly, so chemical effects remained on the body and soul of the wounded for years.

Those who were injured by the chemical attacks are still suffering from the pain.

"Chemical weapon means suffocation, i.e. you cannot breathe, so that you cannot live,” Nasser Afshari – a victim of the chemical weapons – once told IRNA in an interview.

Even if the animals got access to chemical weapons, they would not use them; however, Saddam did, Afshari said.

People in Iran still suffer from the effects of the bombings; meanwhile, they mark Sacred Defense in late September annually as it remembers the bravery of their fellow countrymen and countrywomen, which has brought the Iranian nation great glory. 

Iraq’s eight years of the imposed war claimed the lives of 230,000 Iranian people and left nearly 600,000 war disabled, about 43,000 Iranians were captivated by the Iraqi forces, and thousands of others went missing.