The World - News from May 23, 1988

Iraqi planes bombed Kurdish villages in northern Iraq with chemical weapons, killing at least 264 people and wounding 159 others over the past month, a Kurdish rebel source said. The death toll included 61 killed and 50 wounded last Sunday, when the planes bombed about 10 Kurdish villages in the Khoshnow region, a spokesman for the Iranian-allied Patriotic Union of Kurdistan told United Press International. The source did not identify the chemicals used in the bombings, but in the past the Iraqis are reported to have used nerve gas, mustard gas and cyanide against the ethnic Kurdish minority.