Kurds destroy Halabja memorial

Hundreds of Kurdish protesters destroyed a memorial to the 1988 gas attack in the Iraqi town of Halabja on Thursday, setting the museum ablaze on the 18th anniversary of the deaths of 5,000 local people.
A hospital official said one man was shot dead when a gathering to commemorate the attack turned into a protest over poor local services.
A local journalist working for Reuters said he saw police and Kurdish Peshmerga militiamen fire shots to disperse the protesters after they rampaged through the one-storey, circular museum that serves as a potent reminder of the 1988 attack. The violence is likely to embarrass Kurdish leaders, who have managed to keep the Kurdish north stable while sectarian killings and an insurgency have swept the rest of the country.