Kurds fear chemical attacks

SULAYMAN and his wife live alone in a two-roomed house in the mountains of northern Iraq. Now, as war looms, more than 30 relatives have come to stay, fearing possible chemical attacks on their cities.

Women and children crowd around a wood stove in one room while, outside in the pouring rain, their menfolk unload sacks of potatoes and rice.

The scene is repeated in dozens of villages high in the Kurdish mountains. “The reason we’re here is because we are afraid of chemical attacks, we don’t want to end up like the people of Halabja,” said Selman, Sulayman’s son, who arrived with his wife and four children from Dohuk, some 100 km to the southeast.