SOHR: More than 3,700 people were killed in Syria’s civil war this year

A monitoring group said 3,746 people were killed in the Syrian civil war in 2021, the 11th year of the conflict in the country.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said this week that number includes 1505 civilians, and among them were 360 ​​children. About 600 members of the Islamic State, or ISIS, were killed and 158 by the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias.

The observatory is based in the UK but has a network of contacts in Syria.

The figure represents the lowest annual number of war deaths to date. President Bashar Assad has declared victory in the war and his regime controls most of the country, although large parts are still under rebel control.

After starting as an uprising against Assad as part of the Arab Spring in 2011, the conflict turned into a complex mediation war involving the US, Iran, Russia and Turkey. At least 350,000 people have died over the past decade, the United Nations reported in September. The UN said that this number was of verified deaths and that the actual number is much higher.

The conflict also caused the world’s biggest refugee crisis, with more than half the people of Syria have been displaced. There are 5.5 million refugees living mainly in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, while another 6.7 million are internally displaced.

Fighting and deaths have dropped in the last two years after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed on a ceasefire at the opposition stronghold in Idlib in March 2020.

More than 10,000 people were killed in 2019 and 6,800 were killed in 2020, according to the Observatory. The deadliest year in the group tracking was 2014, when 76,000 people were killed.

Russian-backed forces still occasionally launch attacks against targets in Idlib, and ISIS remnants have also carried out “hit-and-grab” attacks in eastern Syria. according to AFP.

 

 

SOURCE: EX Bulletin