HALABJA, Iraq (Dec. 5) -- Six families nervously awaited the DNA tests on the young man who returned from Iran. They wondered: Could this be their son who was just an infant in 1988 and somehow lived through a deadly chemical attack by Saddam Hussein's regime? There was absolute silence as the judge announced the lab results. The man, who called himself Ali, was deemed to be the sole surviving child of 58-year-old Fatima Mohammed Salih, who had lost her husband and all her other six children in the poison gas clouds that covered the mostly Kurdish city of Halabja.
For the first time in more than two decades, they embraced. "I'm in a dream," said 21-year-old Ali Pour as he comforted the weeping woman. The reunion Friday in Iraq's northern Kurdish region was the rarest of artifacts from Halabja: a moment of joy from the day the city became an open cemetery for an estimated 5,600 people killed when lethal gas was dropped by Saddam's military. It was part of Saddam's brutal 1987-88 campaign to crush a Kurdish rebellion. Nearly 200,000 people died in Baghdad's scorched-earth offensive.
The alleged mastermind of the Halabja attack, Saddam's cousin known as "Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid, is among regime officials who have been sentenced to death for the Kurdish crackdown and other crimes. The trial specifically on Halabja is still under way. It's the only known case of a long-lost child from Halabja being definitively reunited with a relative.
The assistant chief of the Directorate of the Martyrs of Halabja, Abdul Rahman Yasin, said 41 names — children at the time of the attack — are still registered as missing. "I wonder if it is a dream or a gift from God," said his newfound mother.
To Read The Full Story, Please Go To:
http://news.aol.com/article/iraqi-son-mother-torn-apart-by-war/802763?icid=main
htmlws-main-n
dl1
link7
http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Firaqi-son-mother-torn-apart-by-war%2F802763
I found this to be such a touching story, I hope you do as well. You can join Unsolved Mysteries and post your own mysteries or
interesting stories for the world to read and respond to Click hereScroll all the way down to read replies.Show all stories by Author:  64514 ( Click here )
Halloween is Right around the corner.. .
|
