MS Risk Blog

Syrian War: 465,000 Killed in Six Years of Fighting

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This month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is a British-based war monitor, reported that so far about 465,000 people have been killed and missing in Syrias ongoing civil war.

The war began six years ago on 15 March, with protests against President Bashar al-Assads government. Since then, it has dragged in global and regional powers, allowed the so-called Islamic State (IS) group to gain hold of huge tracts of territory and has caused the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

The Observatory has reported that it had documented the deaths of more than 321,000 people since the beginning of the war, adding that more than 145,000 people have been reported as missing. The Observatory, which has used a network of contacts across the country in order to maintain a count of causalities since near the beginning of the conflict, states that amongst those killed are more than 96,000 civilians, adding that government forces and their allies killed more than 83,500 civilians, including more than 27,500 in air strikes and 14,600 under torture in prison. Rebel shelling killed more than 7,000 civilians. IS has killed more than 3,700 civilians, while air strikes by the US-led coalition have killed 920 civilians. Turkey, which is backing rebels in the northern region of the country, has killed more than 500 civilians. The Syrian government and Russia both deny targeting civilians or using torture or extrajudicial killings. Most rebel groups and Turkey also deny targeting civilians while the US led-coalition states that it tries hard to avoid civilian causalities and always investigates reports that it has done so.