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The following is a list of massacres that have occurred in the area of modern Iraq, and does not include collateral damage, especially from raids and airstrikes, which were due to mistaken identity or unfortunately getting caught in the line of fire.
| Date | City | Attack | Deaths | (Alleged) Perpetrator | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 January – 10 February 1258 |  Baghdad | Siege of Baghdad (1258) | 200,000 – 2,000,000 |  Ilkhanate Mongol Empire  Kingdom of Georgia  Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia | estimates range from 200,000 to 2,000,000 civilian deaths | [1] [2] |
| Date | City | Attack | Deaths | (Alleged) perpetrator | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 May 1924 |  Kirkuk | Kirkuk Massacre of 1924 | 200 [3] -300 | Assyrian Levies | Assyrian Levies massacre an estimated 200-300 people after a Turkmen shop keeper and Assyrian soldier get into an argument. | [4] [5] |
| 7 August 1933 – 11 August 1933 | Northern Kingdom of Iraq, notably at Simele | Simele massacre | Several hundred (British estimate) [6] [7] [8] 3,000–6,000 (Assyrian estimate) [9] [10] | Royal Iraqi Army (led by Bakr Sidqi, Arab and Kurdish tribes | the Iraqi army massacred 600–3,000 Assyrian Christians | [11] |
| 1–2 June 1941 | Baghdad | Farhud | ~180 to 1,000+ Jews killed [12] ~300–400 pogromists killed during suppression | Rashid Ali, Yunis al-Sabawi, al-Futuwa youths, and Iraqi mobs | Considered "The Beginning of The End of The Jewish Community of Iraq | [13] |
| 12 July 1946 | Kirkuk | Gavurbağı massacre | 16-20 | Iraqi police | Turkmen protestors were massacred | |
| April 1950 – June 1951 | Baghdad | 1950–1951 Baghdad bombings | 3–4 | Iraqi Zionist agents, Israeli Mossad agents, Iraqi Istiqlal Party agents | Series of bombings of Jewish targets in Baghdad | [14] |
| 14 July 1959 |  Kirkuk | Kirkuk massacre of 1959 | 71-79 |  Iraqi Communist Party,Fourth Brigade | Kurdish members of the Iraqi Communist Party target Turkmens leaving an estimated 20 dead. This was followed by Kurdish soldiers from the Fourth Brigade targeting Turkmen residential areas with mortars, causing the destruction of 120 homes. Between 31 and 79 Turkmen were killed with 130 wounded. The Iraqi government referred to the incident as a "massacre". | [15] |
| Date | City | Attack | Deaths | (Alleged) Perpetrator | Notes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 January 1969 |  Baghdad | 1969 Baghdad hangings | 14 |  Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party | Iraqi authorities hanged 14 Iraqis for allegedly spying for Israel during a public execution in Baghdad; nine were Jewish, three were Muslim and two were Christian | [16] |
| 16 September 1969 | Surya | Surya massacre | 47 | Ba'athist regime | The Iraqi military headed by Lieutenant Abdul Karim al-Jahayshee massacred 47 people in the Assyrian village of Soriya (Ṣawriyā) including the Chaldean priest Ḥannā Yaʻqūb Qāshā and left 22 wounded. | [17] [18] [19] |
Kirkuk is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located 238 kilometres north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Kurds, Iraqi Turkmens and Arabs. Kirkuk sits on the ruins of the original Kirkuk Citadel which sits near the Khasa River.
Iraq under the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party saw severe violations of human rights. Secret police, state terrorism, torture, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, deportations, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical warfare, and the destruction of the Mesopotamian marshes were some of the methods Saddam Hussein and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, which violated the Charter of the United Nations. The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown, but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.
Ali Hassan Majid al-Tikriti, nicknamed Chemical Ali, was an Iraqi politician and military commander under Saddam Hussein who served as defence minister, interior minister, and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service. He was also the governor of Kuwait during much of the 1990–91 Gulf War.
Human rights in pre-Saddam Iraq were often lacking to various degrees among the various regimes that ruled the country. Human rights abuses in the country predated the rule of Saddam Hussein.
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate. The Iraqis committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population, mostly civilians.
The Peshmerga comprise the standing military of Kurdistan Region, an autonomous political entity within the Republic of Iraq. According to the Constitution of Iraq, the Peshmerga and their security subsidiaries are solely responsible for the security of Kurdistan Region, chiefly due to the fact that the Iraqi Armed Forces are forbidden to enter Iraqi Kurdistan. These subsidiaries include Asayish, Parastin û Zanyarî, and Zêrevanî. The Peshmerga's history dates back to the 18th century, when they began as a strictly tribal pseudo-military border guard under the Ottoman Turks and the Safavid Iranians. By the 19th century, they had evolved into a disciplined and well-trained guerrilla force.
The Assyrian Democratic Movement, popularly known as Zowaa, is an Assyrian political party situated in Iraq, and one of the main Assyrian parties within the Iraqi parliament. The Assyrian Democratic Movement states its aims are to establish equal citizenship rights with the rest of the Iraqi people without discrimination on the basis of nationality, belief, religious affiliation, culture, language and other characteristics of the native Chaldo-Assyrian Syriac people of Iraq, to acknowledge the past massacres committed against them and to ensure they are never repeated again.
Iraqi Assyrians are an ethnic and linguistic minority group, indigenous to Upper Mesopotamia. Assyrians in Iraq are those Assyrians still residing in the country of Iraq, and those in the Assyrian diaspora who are of Iraqi-Assyrian heritage. They share a common history and ethnic identity, rooted in shared linguistic, cultural and religious traditions, with Assyrians in Iran, Assyrians in Turkey and Assyrians in Syria, as well as with the Assyrian diaspora. Assyrian diaspora in Detroit, Areas with large expat populations include Chicago and Sydney.
Sinjar is a town in the Sinjar District of the Nineveh Governorate in northern Iraq. It is located about five kilometers south of the Sinjar Mountains. Its population in 2013 was estimated at 88,023, and is predominantly Yazidi.
Minorities in Iraq include various ethnic and religious groups.
The Barzani tribe is a Kurdish tribe and tribal confederation of various neighboring tribes inhabiting Barzan in Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Barzanis are mostly Naqshbandi and one of the most influential tribes in Kurdistan.
Iraqi Armenians are Iraqi citizens and residents of Armenian ethnicity. Many Armenians settled in Iraq after fleeing the 1915 Armenian genocide. It is estimated that there are 10,000–20,000 Armenians living in Iraq, with communities in Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, Kirkuk, Baqubah, Dohuk, Zakho and Avzrog.
The Christians of Iraq are considered to be one of the oldest continuous Christian communities in the world.
Bashiqa is a town situated at the heart of the Nineveh plain, between Mosul and Sheikhan, on the edges of Mount Maqlub.
The 1983–1986 Kurdish rebellions in Iraq occurred during the Iran–Iraq War as PUK and KDP Kurdish militias of Iraqi Kurdistan rebelled against Saddam Hussein as part of the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, in an attempt to form an independent state. With Iraqi government forces occupied by the Iran-Iraq War, Kurdish Peshmerga succeeded in taking control of some enclaves, with Iranian logistic and sometimes military support. The initial rebellion resulted in stalemate by 1985.
The Iraqi–Kurdish conflict consists of a series of wars and rebellions by the Kurds against the central authority of Iraq during the 20th century, which began shortly after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and is still ongoing. Some put the marking point of the conflict beginning to the attempt by Mahmud Barzanji to establish an independent Kingdom of Kurdistan, while others relate to the conflict as only the post-1961 insurrection by the Barzanis. Since the US-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent recognition of the Kurdistan Region the number and scope of armed clashes between the Central Government of Iraq and the Kurds has significantly decreased. In spite of that, however, there are still outstanding issues that continue to cause strife between them in matters such as the disputed territories of northern Iraq and rights to oil and gas, leading to occasional clashes.
The disputed territories of northern Iraq are regions defined by article 140 of the Constitution of Iraq as being Arabised during Baath Party rule in Iraq. Most of these regions are inhabited by non-Arabs, including Kurds, Assyrians, Yazidis, Turkmens/Turkomans, and Shabaks.
Between 1968 and 2003, the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of the Iraqi Republic perpetrated multiple campaigns of demographic engineering against the country's non-Arabs. While Arabs constitute the majority of Iraq's population as a whole, they are not the majority in parts of northern Iraq, and a minority in Iraqi Kurdistan. In an attempt to Arabize the north, the Iraqi government pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing, killing and forcefully displacing a large number of Iraqi minorities—predominantly Kurds, but also Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyrians, Shabaks, Mandaeans, and Armenians, among others—and subsequently allotting the cleared land to Arab settlers. In 1978 and 1979 alone, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down and around 200,000 Kurds were deported to other parts of Iraq.
The November Sinjar offensive was a combination of operations of Kurdish Peshmerga, PKK, and Yezidi Kurd militias in November 2015, to recapture the city of Sinjar from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. It resulted in a decisive victory for the Kurdish forces, who expelled the ISIL militants from Sinjar and regained control of Highway 47, which until then had served as the major supply route between the ISIL strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul.
The persecution of the Feyli Kurds was a systematic persecution of Feylis by Saddam Hussein between 1970 and 2003. The persecution campaigns led to the expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Feyli Kurds from their ancestral lands in Iraq. The persecution began when a large number of Feyli Kurds were exposed to a big campaign by the regime that began by the dissolved RCCR issuance for 666 decision, which deprived Feyli Kurds of Iraqi nationality and considered them as Iranians. The systematic executions started in Baghdad and Khanaqin in 1979 and later spread to other Iraqi and Kurdish areas.
The total number of Assyrian victims of these events was estimated by British officials at about 600, but Assyrian sources put it at several thousand.
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