These are world leaders who used chemical weapons.

On April 8, 2018, an attack on Syria shocked the world. The pictures showed men, women, and children who were desperately gasping for air, and a scene often linked to chemical assaults poured water at them. But chemical weapons are illegal and were banned globally since 1925, when the international community came together and signed what is known as the Geneva Protocol.

But despite the ban, some world leaders have used it against their own people.

In this article we will see which leaders have used chemical weapons against the Geneva Protocol in 1925.

The first use of chemical weapons occurred in Italy by fascist dictator Benito Mussolini after Ethiopia's invasion in 1935. Mussolini had made an attack on the Ethiopian Empire from her then colony Eritrea. Mussolini was determined to expand his empire at any cost, even if it meant going against the Geneva Protocol, writes Periscope.

The Italians used chemical weapons, including the drop of mustard bombs. According to the Ethiopian emperor of the day, Haile Selassie, chemical weapons had killed tens of thousands of people.

The next use of chemical weapons occurred at Japan's invasion of China in 1937 during the second Sino-japonese war. Japanese Emperor Hirohito had reportedly ordered the use of chemical and biological weapons against Chinese soldiers and civilians until he tried to expand his control in China. Japan is estimated to have undergone between 1,000 and 3,000 attacks, and it is said to have produced between 5 million and 7 million ammunition containing chemical elements such as Cyanid hydrogen and mustard. There is no official statistics showing how many people died as a result of these chemical weapons, but 300 thousand people were known to die in this war.

After the war, a treaty was signed in 1997 specifying that the Japanese government was responsible for cleaning up weapons that were left behind, Periscopi notes.

The next occasion was in Germany, Adolf Hitler, with chemical gas used during World War II. While he did not use weapons forbidden in war, he still used them in Nazi concentration camps, killing prisoners along the Holocaust.

A chemical element known as “Zyklon B” was used in the concentration camps, which was banned with Geneva Protocols. Over 6 million Jews were killed in total during the Holocaust.

In 1963, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser also used chemical weapons in Yemen when his country was exiled to the civil war that year. War, known as the North Yemen Civil War, began in 1962 after the death of the king of the country. When power was given to his son, a stamp was organized within the army, which brought down the monarchy and established the republic. The military forces that were loyal to the former king went north of the country and fought the new Republican forces. Egypt was one of the only regional states that supported the new government in Yemen until Nasser was trying to make other Arab nationalist partners. Under Nasser's leadership, Egypt used brutal tactics to bring down the royal forces. The country continued to use chemical weapons, including mustard and nervous elements between the years of R.63 and HINA67. This made Nasser the first Arab leader to use illegal weapons.

The other world leader who used chemical weapons was Iraqi Saddam Hussein on two different occasions. The first case was during the Iraqi-Iranian war that began in 1980. And then, in 1988, he used these weapons against another group of Iraqi Kurds. On March 16, 1988, he threw chemical weapons, including mustard gas and sarin, into the Kurdish town of Halabya. This attack killed 3,200 to 5,000 people, writes Periscope.

Hussain also used weapons against the Kurds again during what is known as a “Anfal” offensive.

In 2013, Bashar al-Assad became the next leader to use these weapons during the peak of civil war in Syria. The attacks targeted opposition groups that controlled the locations near the capital. UN inspectors have confirmed the use of sarin gas in that attack that killed nearly 1500 people. But Assad still denies that he was involved in those attacks. /Periscopi