Saddam Hussain waged war against many minorities in Iraq, including the Kurds. In the late 80s, Iraqui forces used poison gas to kill thousands of Kurds in one town. There were some truly horrific photos that his the press at the time, they stayed with me.
Here's what wikki has to say:
Al-Anfal Campaign: In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign.
The campaign was mostly directed at Shiite Kurds (Faili Kurds) who sided with Iranians during the Iraq-Iran War. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 182,000) people, many of them women and children.
A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms and power stations.
In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Persian Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against several uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed full-scale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.