SURVIVORS of an Iraqi chemical weapons attack in Iran have redoubled calls for international recognition of the massacre over 33 years later.

It came as groups marked the 40th anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq war on Sunday, with the anniversary of the invasion falling on Tuesday. 

The gas attack on the Kurdish town of Sardasht on June 28 1987, during Saddam Hussein’s leadership, is believed to have been the first time that chemical weapons were deliberately used to target civilians in an urban area.

Some 119 people were killed and 1,518 wounded according to official statistics, though the real numbers are likely to be much higher.

Saleh Azizpour, who runs an association for survivors of the attack, explained that as many as 8,000 were affected and that many more are suffering from long-term health complications.

Calling for the international community to recognise the gas attack, he said: “If someone lost a leg or an arm in the war, you can put a prosthesis on him. But when our lungs are burned, who will breathe for us?”

Iraq began using chemical weapons against Iran as early as 1982, according to Mr Azizpour, but the UN security council continued to support Iraq and avoided blaming it for the attacks.

Survivors accused the international community of complicity in the 1987 assault and branded its response feeble.

Many Western companies and governments, including in the US and Britain, are known to have supplied Hussein with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war.

In 2005, Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat was jailed for 17 years for supplying the material used in chemical attacks such as that on Sardasht and on the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja, where some 5,000 people were killed in March 1988.