Darfur One Of Several Bloody Episode In Arab World

Several Arab states, however, have bloody episodes in their own recent past for which few rulers have been held accountable.

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant this month for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

International experts say at least 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur, a mainly desert region in western Sudan. Khartoum says 10,000 have died. The conflict began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.

Many Arab governments accuse the ICC of double standards, saying it has failed to tackle alleged war crimes by Israel against Arabs or by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Several Arab states, however, have bloody episodes in their own recent past for which few rulers have been held accountable.

Here are some of the most notable:

ALGERIA

Up to 150,000 people were killed in a decade-long civil war that died down in 2002, about three quarters of them civilians. Islamist armed groups carried out massacres in villages and neighbourhoods, but the security forces and their allies were also involved in a "dirty war" of extra-judicial killings and disappearances, human rights groups say.

IRAQ

Former President Saddam Hussein ordered countless killings during his three decades in power. His 1987-88 "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds killed an estimated 100,000. An Iraqi poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja killed about 5,000 in 1988. Thousands of Kurds and Shi'ites were killed when Saddam's forces suppressed rebellions at the end of the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam, captured by U.S.-led forces that invaded Iraq in 2003, was hanged in 2006 after a court convicted him of killing 148 Shi'ites in 1982 after an attempt on his life.

JORDAN

In "Black September" 1970, King Hussein unleashed his army on Palestinian guerrillas who had become a challenge to his rule in Jordan, where Palestinians form a majority of the population. Several thousand people, mostly Palestinians, were killed or wounded in the conflict, which ended in the PLO's expulsion.

LIBYA

In 1996 Libyan troops stormed a prison on the outskirts of Tripoli and killed about 1,200 Islamists who had been jailed for opposing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, human rights groups say. The state has acknowledged the massacre, without saying how many died, and is discussing compensation with the victims' families.

MOROCCO

Under King Hassan II's rule, the government killed many dissidents and protesters and buried them in mass graves between 1965 and the early 1990s. Human rights groups say more than 1,000 people were killed. The state has acknowledged 50.

SYRIA

Syrian forces loyal to then-President Hafez al-Assad razed the old quarters of Hama in 1982 to crush Islamist gunmen who had taken refuge in the city, ending an insurgency that had already cost many lives on both sides. Estimates of the death toll in three weeks of ferocious operations in Hama vary from 5,000 to more than 30,000 out of a population of 350,000.