Book on Iranian victims of chemical warfare unveiled

TEHRAN,May 15(MNA) – A book on Iranian soldiers wounded by Iraqi chemical weapons during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war was unveiled at a ceremony in the Tehran Peace Museum on Tuesday. Entitled “Travelogue as Narrated by Coughs”, the book has been written by one of the Iranian soldiers, Hamid Hesam. The book features his journey along with a group of the victims of chemical warfare and several members of the Tehran Peace Museum to Japan to attend an anniversary of the tragedies of the atomic attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Every year people from around the world and even from the United States gather in Hiroshima on this day, and the participation of the Iranian victims of chemical warfare can help the world to get to know more about the fact,” Hesam said at the ceremony. “We need to make the world aware of the pain and oppression our civilians have been through all these years”, he added. The book has been published under the auspices of the Foundation for Preservation and Publication of Sacred Defense Works and Values. In July 1988, the village of Zardeh in the Kurdish region of Eslamabad-e Gharb in Kermanshah Province was hit by Iraqi chemical bombs, which killed 275 people and injured 1,146. Many people in the region are still suffering from the effects of the attack. Likewise, in a previous attack, another Iranian Kurdish region, Sardasht, in West Azarbaijan was also struck by Iraqi chemical weapons on June 28, 1987. This was the first time that Saddam Hussein had used this type of warfare against Iranian civilians. A quarter of Sardasht’s population of 20,000 of that time is still suffering from severe illnesses as a result of the attack.