In 2003 United States Peace activist Rachel Corrie was run over by an Israeli Bull dozer while she attempted to stop a Palestinian home being demolished. Corrie was visiting Gaza in a college project to link her home town of Olympia, Washington with Rafa. She had been in the town for two months when the home of a pharmacist she had befriended was going to be knocked down by the Israeli army. She, and 8 other activists, had stood in the way of the bulldozers to prevent them from illegally destroying the home. Wearing a bright orange florescent jacket and using a megaphone to protest just seconds before she was run over. Rachel was run over twice by the bulldozer which fractured her skull, broke her ribs and punctured her lungs. The facts of the event are disputed between eyewitnesses that state the bulldozer deliberately ran Rachel Corrie over and the Israeli government that say it was an accident and the bulldozer operator didn’t see her.

 

In 1988 Saddam Hussein ordered a chemical attack in Halabja, Northern Iraq, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injuring up to 10,000. This is the first documented occasion of Saddam using chemical warfare. Originally it was believed that the attack came from Iran, but later it became evident that Saddam and his deputy Ali Hassan al-Majid (chemical Ali) had used the weapon on their own people in an attempt to quell Iranian forces and sympathisers.  Most of the injured were taken to Iranian capital Tehran, where they were treated for mustard gas exposure and about three quarters of the victims were women and children. Chemical Ali was among six Iraqi officers that were tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity that led to the deaths of more than 100,000 people.