Sulaimaniyah, Iraq – Adil Majeed looked distraught as he smoked a cigarette and recounted the devastating events of the late 1980s Anfal military offensive.
Unleashed by the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein against Kurdish people in the north, the campaign killed at least 100,000 Kurds, mostly civilians, with some estimates suggesting 180,000 people died. Thousands went missing and hundreds of villages were destroyed.
Rights organisations say the Anfal campaign was a systematic ethnic cleansing amounting to genocide.
Saddam claimed he was quelling a rebellion after Kurdish Peshmerga fighters – who were fighting against the government – sided with the enemy during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and used Kurdish villages as their safe havens.
Survivors of the Anfal Kurdish genocide long for closure msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.