canisters on the town. The town and surrounding district were attacked with bombs, artillery fire and chemical weapons, the last of which proved most devastating. At least 5,000 people died as an immediate result of the chemical attack and it is estimated that a further 7,000 people were injured or suffered long-term illness. Most of the victims of the attack on the town of Halabja were Kurdish civilians. The attack is believed to have included the nerve agents Tabun, Sarin and VX, as well as mustard gas. However, according to former senior CIA analyst Stephen C. Pelletiere, Iraq did not have the nerve agent used in the attack but did have mustard gas which was used in the Iran–Iraq War. An interdisciplinary scientific study from 2019, after more than three decades, shows that the chemical attacks on Halabja have long-term biological, psychological and social effects on the survivors. The authors, Faraidoun Moradi, Mia Söderberg, Fazil Moradi and others conclude: "The post-exposure somatic and psychosocial effects such as respiratory symptoms of CWA are a plausible contributors to poor general health and quality of life among survivors. We conclude that multidisciplinary interventions are needed to tackle the biopsychosocial complications in survivors of SM exposure to minimize further health damage in the future, as well as to promote their health-related quality of life." It is occasionally suggested that cyanide was also included among these chemical weapons, though this assertion has been cast into doubt, as cyanide is a natural byproduct of impure Tabun. Before the war ended the Iraqis moved in on the ground and completely destroyed the town. In March 2010, the Iraqi High Criminal Court recognized the Halabja massacre as genocide; the decision was welcomed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. Kurdish autonomy In the mountains to the west of Halabja, a militant Islamist group, Ansar al-Islam, occupied a small enclave in the period of 2000–2003. The area was overrun by Peshmerga forces from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), with U.S. air support, at the beginning of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. The town has remained a center of Islamism in the Kurdistan region, however. Just before Kurds gained some autonomy over the Iraqi Kurdistan region in 1991, which included Halabja, a new town was set up where some former Kurdish refugees later relocated. The new town called Halabja Taza (or New Halabja) today has an estimated 9,000 homes. The