The first phase of the project concerned the translation of historical documents related to the events that happened in Halabja, Kurdistan, Iraq on 16 March 1988, when Saddam Hussein's regime bombed the entire district with chemical weapons in the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 5,000 Kurds. The attack on Halabja has been well-documented as being the single most brutal attack of the regime as well as the deadliest chemical weapons attack against a civilian population in the history of the world. Today, many of the living Kurdish civilians affected by the chemical attack still suffer from various illnesses both psychological and physical in addition to the birth defects of their progeny.