Almost 20,000 killed in Syria throughout 2016

As the conflict in Syria continues, the list of contributors to the crimes and violations committed against the Syrian people also continues to grow larger, the Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) stated in its annual report.

The SHRC report, the fifteenth since 2001, exposed extensive violations committed against the Syrian people by a variety of actors. It identified as the primary perpetrators forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad, Russia, Iran and its international Shia jihadist proxies from Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and the US-led Coalition against Daesh.

“The variety of weapons used and types of crimes and violations committed have also grown in both number and size, making the past six years which Syria has witnessed as one of the greatest tragedies occurring in the 21st century undoubtedly,” the report said.

The report documented the deaths of 19,524 Syrians in 2016, about one person every 27 minutes. 2,779 children and 1,652 women were among the victims.

SHRC added that 633 massacres were committed by the Assad regime, its Shia jihadist allies and its foreign backers. About 526 were committed by Syrian and Russian warplanes with allied militias on the ground, registering 83.1 per cent of the total massacres recorded in 2016.

31 massacres were committed by the US-led Coalition, marking 4.9 per cent, while another 27 were committed by the Daesh extremist group, registering 4.27 per cent of the total massacres committed last year.

The 49 remaining massacres were unattributed in the report.

Like 2015, warplanes were the main weapon used against the Syrian people in 2016, responsible for 483 mass casualty attacks compared to 413 in 2015. Barrel bombs have killed 4,769 people, marking 24.4 per cent of the total Syrians killed last year.

In terms of the geographical distribution of the butcher’s bill, the governorates of Aleppo and Idlib witnessed the largest number of massacres in 2016. Of these massacres, 320 were carried out in Aleppo and 101 were carried out in Idlib.

The Damascus Countryside, administered as an individual entity, came in third place as the number of massacres carried out, 52, has decreased in 2016.

The Syrian regime’s forces continued carrying out arbitrary detentions in the various regions it controls; most of these take place at various checkpoints, at border crossings and in Damascus International Airport, according to the report.

The atrocities committed in Syria since 2011 have been systematically performed using every type of weapon imaginable against the Syrian people, their homes and critical infrastructure. The Assad regime and its allies are responsible for by far the lion’s share of attacks, with other militant groups lagging far behind.