Reza Jagiri, the director of the Medical Committee of the Society of People Disabled by Weapons of Mass Destruction, said the West was responsible for 400 chemical weapons attacks committed by the Saddam Hussein regime against Iranian and Iraqi people.
In the vicious crime of the chemical bombardment of Sardasht, over 1000 civilians, including Iraqi refugees, were martyred and over 8000 were permanently disabled, he said as quoted by Al-Alam.
The Saddam regime not only used chemical weapons against military forces but also targeted civilians in Iran and Iraq, and the massacres in Sardasht and Halabja are the best concrete examples of these heinous crimes, he noted.
He went on to say that Sardasht had been the first victim of weapons of mass destruction since the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. during World War II.
Japanese citizens to visit WMD victims
Meanwhile, a group of Japanese citizens from the city of Hiroshima and a number of foreign reporters visited the Khosravi border checkpoint in the western province of Kermanshah on Wednesday on the occasion of the National Day for the Campaign Against Chemical Weapons.
According to IRIB, the group arrived in Kermanshah on Tuesday to visit the areas in the Iranian border regions that were attacked with chemical weapons during the 1980-1988 Iraqi imposed war and to meet victims of the chemical attacks.
Qasr-e-Shirin Governor Shahriar Heydari welcomed the group and briefed the visitors on the Iraqi troops’ chemical attack on the region.
He said, “The people of the world know something about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but know nothing about the Iranian cities destroyed by the chemical bombardments of Iraqi forces.”
He expressed hope that such visits would inform the world about the terrible event of the chemical attack on Sardasht and would also lead to the expansion of friendship between the Iranian and Japanese nations.
MS/HG
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MNA