Almost half-a-million killed in six years of Syria fighting, reveals rights group

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Monday that more than 465,000 people have been killed or forcibly disappeared during the six years of fighting in the Syrian civil war. The group said that it has documented the deaths of more than 321,000 people, including 96,000 civilians, since the start of the war, and the disappearance of 145,000 others.

According to the UK-based organisation, government forces and their allies have killed more than 83,500 civilians, with more than 27,500 killed in air raids and 14,600 killed during torture in the regime’s prisons. Shelling by armed opposition groups has killed 7,000 civilians. Daesh is known to have killed over 3,700 civilians while air strikes launched by the US-led coalition have killed 920 civilians. Turkey, which supports the armed opposition groups in northern Syria, has apparently killed more than 500 civilians.

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The Syrian government and its Russian ally deny targeting civilians and the use torture and extrajudicial killings. Most of the armed opposition groups and Turkey also deny targeting civilians. The coalition led by the US insists that it tries to avoid civilian casualties and always investigates reports of their occurrence.

The observatory said that half-a-million people have been arrested and held in regime prisons since the start of the conflict in 2011. Thousands of others have been killed during the same period in prisons operated by armed opposition groups or Daesh.