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Over 240,000 killed since beginning of Syrian conflict

August 7, 2015 at 12:04 pm

The conflict in Syria, which has been ongoing for four years, has resulted in the death of over 240,000 individuals, including 12,000 children according to new statistics from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

The UK-based organisation also stated that this increase includes the death of over 10,000 individuals in nearly two months.

Director of SOHR, Rami Abdelrahman, told France Press yesterday: “We documented 240,381 deaths since the beginning of the revolution against Bashar Al-Assad’s regime in March 2011.”

According to their calculation, the number of civilians killed increased to “71,781, including 11,964 children”.

These statistics also include 42,384 Syrian opposition fighters, jihadists and Kurds.

As for the foreign jihadists fighting in Syria, they lost 34,375 fighters.

However, the largest death toll according to SOHR is in the ranks of the regime’s fighters, which lost 88,616 fighters, one third of the total death toll during the war. Among those who were killed, SOHR documented the death of 50,570 soldiers, 33,839 deaths in the ranks of the National Defence Forces, 903 of Hezbollah’s fighters, and 3,304 fighters from foreign Shia militias.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has also documented the death of 3,225 individuals whose identities remain unknown.

SOHR has stressed that the actual death toll is much higher than the number of deaths they documented.

This does not include the over 30,000 individuals who are missing, of which nearly 20,000 are being held in government prisons. It also does not include the 9,000 members of the pro-Assad forces who are being detained by the opposition fighters and the over 4,000 people kidnapped by Daesh.

The hundreds of Kurds and foreigner fighters who have joined the Kurdish People’s Defence Units in their fight against Daesh have also not been included.

The Syrian conflict has led to four million Syrians being forced to flee the country, while a further seven million have been internally displaced.