Sygma
01 January, 1991
The arrival of a US Sikorsky 'green giant' helicopter with relief supplies causes a stampede of famished Kurdish refugees. An eight-year-old girl was trampled to death in the melee.
Iraq's Kurdish population had to pay dearly for its uprising in the aftermath of the Gulf War. Driven north by the Iraqi army, which had used chemical weapons on them in 1988 and '89, some two million Kurds started on the long trek to neighboring Turkey and Iran. Countless people died in the bitter cold of the barren mountains. Aid programs were slow to get underway.
