The Dujail massacre was a mass killing of Shia Muslim civilians by the Ba'athist Iraqi government on 8 July 1982 in Dujail, Iraq. The massacre was committed in retaliation to an earlier assassination attempt by the Shia Islamic Dawa Party against the then President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. The town of Dujail had a large Shia population, with 75,000 residents at the time of the incident, and was a well-known stronghold of the Dawa Party. It is located approximately 53 km (33 mi) from the capital of Baghdad, in the Sunni-majority Saladin Governorate of Iraq.