SOHR: UN… more than 306,000 civilians killed in ten years of Syrian conflict
More than 306,000 civilians have died in Syria in the first ten years of the armed conflict that began in 2011 and in which, according to international media such as the Spanish agency EphSeveral countries then intervened, including Russia, the United States and Turkey.
The figure is made up of the 143,350 officially documented civilian deaths and an additional 163,537 deaths estimated using statistical models, The UN Human Rights Office reported today.
Sources used by the UN include the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies, the Syrian Center for Statistics and Research, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and the government’s own records.
The number of civilians killed in Syria in the conflict, which began after a period of democratic protests known as the Arab Spring (2011), represents 1.5% of the country’s population at the start of hostilities or an average of 83 deaths per day.
The report notes that “the magnitude of civilian casualties in the last 10 years represents a staggering 1.5% of the total population of the Syrian Arab Republic at the start of the conflict, raising serious concerns about the failure of the parties to the conflict to respect the rules of international humanitarian law on the protection of civilians”.
The statistic reported today takes into account people killed as a direct result of war operations, such as bombing or bomb attacks, but not those who have died for indirect reasons, such as the interruption of medical services or access to food and water.
The most common causes of death were the use of multiple weapons in street clashes, ambushes and assaults, followed by the use of heavy weapons and ammunition.
Until 2014, the Human Rights Office carried out a detailed count of the victims of the war in Syria, although this was interrupted due to the complexity of the situation, and because it was becoming more and more dangerous to collect the necessary data, explained Francesca Moretto, a of the experts cited by the source.
At a separate event in Geneva dedicated to the humanitarian situation in Syria, quoted by Eph, the UN representative in this country, Imran Riza, indicated that the current number of people in need of humanitarian aid is the highest since 2011. According to these data, 14.6 million Syrians need urgent aid; 1.2 million more than the previous year.
The main reason is the economic decline, a consequence of more than a decade of armed conflict, the poor conditions for agriculture and the increase in the price of fuel and food due to the war in Ukraine.
90% of the population lives below the poverty line and suffers record levels of food insecurity. Riza, quoted by Ephpointed out that although the intensity of the conflict has been reduced, there are places in the country where there is hostility.
Source: latin-american.news